History of Trade Unions in Poland - Current Situation of Polish Trade Unions

Current Situation of Polish Trade Unions

The landscape of Polish trade unions is shaped by three national umbrella organisations, many autonomous organisations on the local level (i.e. ‘Sierpien 80’, Solidarnosc 80, etc.) as well as independent trade unions in individual plants and firms. All Polish trade unions accept the social market economy, parliamentary democracy and European unification.

All trade unions, including NSZZ Solidarnosc, used their old structures to deal with new tasks and challenges during the transformation period after 1989. Despite numerous attempts at reforms all umbrella organisations, as well as most sector unions, suffer because of these dysfunctional structures. Reform of structures has become a magic formula present at all congresses and in programmatic documents in many variations, but that does not result in any significant changes. Although they support political reforms, trade unions are conservative and resistant to reform when it comes to their own organisational structures and finances. The structure of the sector organisations reflects the Polish state-owned economic structures from the beginning of the eighties and not the realities of today’s globalised market economy and precarious labour markets. The borders of local structures often do not follow the local government reorganisations which have taken place in the meantime.

NSZZ Solidarnosc, founded in 1980 and again in 1989, consists of 37 regions and 16 affiliated sectoral unions. Since September 2002 its leader is Janusz Sniadek. OPZZ was established in 1984 and consists of 90 craft unions grouped in 9 sector committees and of 16 regional boards in voivodeships. Since May 2004 its leader is Jan Guz. FZZ Forum was established in 2002, consists of 77 craft unions grouped in 8 branches and is led by Wieslaw Siewierski.

The Catholic Church and particularly the admiration of the Polish pope John Paul II. have profoundly shaped NSZZ Solidarnosc. During the 20th National Congress of Solidarnosc in summer 2006 typically there was an appeal in memory of pope John Paul II. During the first visit of pope Benedict XVI strikes in health care and in other sectors in the whole country were stopped in order not to disturb the distinguished guest and to enable members of the Solidarnosc to participate in the services with the pope.

NSZZ Solidarnosc, OPZZ and FZZ Forum together have about 1.9 million members. It is supposed that a further 200.000 members belong to small independent trade unions. Statistics are rarely published and are extremely difficult to prepare anyway, due to the huge fragmentation and insufficient links between organisational levels. The overwhelming part of the basic trade unions are ‘plant social clubs’ or even ‘functional groups’ for administration, sales, logistics, foremen, technicians, etc.. Some of those ‘plant social clubs’ function only in their own departments or sites and know only little about trade union work in other locations of the enterprise. Cooperation in trade union networks for entire enterprises and groups of companies is only an exception and takes place with foreign, often German help. The EU- inspired Law on Information and Consultation, passed on the 7th of April 2006, slowly contributes to changing this situation by means of the creation of “Employees Councils”.

The degree of unionization is still exceptionally high in the mining industry, in the metallurgical industry, the railways and in education. Trade unions are present in all state owned mines. Apart from two large trade mining unions affiliated to Solidarnosc and OPZZ, there are independent unions of occupational groups. The degree of unionisation depends on the mine and lies between 70 and 90 per cent.

However, in 97 per cent of all establishments in the country there are no trade unions, especially not in small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs). On the other hand, in the business segment where there are employees’ organisations there are over 23.000 trade unions as legal entities and over 300 industry-wide organisations which aspire to be national confederations of trade unions. All of them are properly registered with the courts. Individual membership in sector unions or nationwide confederations do not exist. The reason for this multitude and variety is a law which imposes only a few numerical limits to the establishment of employee organisations. It takes only 10 employees to register a trade union foundation committee. Enterprises with over five or even over a dozen trade unions are not rare. The record belongs to an establishment with 210 employees and 17 trade unions. Within many firms trade unions cooperate between themselves. Yet it also happens that unions negotiate and sign collective agreements with the employer behind each other’s backs. Even many of the enterprise unions of Solidarnosc do not at the same time belong to sector or craft unions but only to the nationwide association.

Trade unions, if they exist, are generally strongest on the plant or site level where the collection of membership dues takes place. The majority of union funds is also spent on this level. The most transparent finances are those of Solidarnosc. Membership subscriptions are distributed as follows: 60 per cent go to the Plant/Site Commission, 25 per cent to the Regional Board, 8 per cent to the National Commission (umbrella organisation), 5 per cent to the strike fund and 2 per cent to the sector union. OPZZ and FZZ Forum also have great problems with financing their activities. In both cases a part of subscriptions of 7 cent per month and member goes to central offices. This is by far not enough to keep the work of the umbrella organisations on a sufficiently high level. During the last few years especially Solidarnosc and OPZZ were forced to cut down on costs by closing offices and reducing staff. OPZZ seems to be in a better material situation than Solidarnosc, as it took over the larger part of the properties of trade unions dating from before 1989 (urban office properties, sanatoriums and holiday homes) and thus for years functioned on the basis of earnings from renting and leasing them. Some affiliated unions of OPZZ and Forum have similar financial sources as they have their own properties.

Until now the cooperation between trade unions and organisations of civil society was somewhat limited. The generally conservative trade unions are often wary or even mistrustful towards consumer or environmental organisations which follow other aims and sometimes represent contradictory interests. Polish trade unions are also often unable to react to new challenges in good time. Other non-governmental organisations usually react quicker. Some important phenomena of today’s labour market like gender questions, mobbing, interest protection of employees mistreated in big chain stores, temporary work or subcontracted labour became topics of the public debate thanks to civil society, the media and ad hoc socio- political associations. Trade unions initially often showed reserve towards new challenges, and they don’t represent the precariously employed and the unemployed anyway.

Employee councils were established for the first time by the act of 7 April 2006. This act is the implementation of the EU directive establishing a general framework for informing and consulting employees of 11 March 2002. The new employee councils have no rights of co- determination of decisions of management. Where there are no trade unions employee councils may become a preliminary stage to the establishment of trade union organisations in the firms.