4. The System of Collective Bargaining

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4. The System of Collective Bargaining

Greece belongs to that group of countries in which legislation plays

a crucial role in the regulation of labour relations and collective bargaining. The right to collective bargaining, as set down in law 1876/90, concerns all those workers employed on the basis of a private-law employment contract by any domestic or foreign employer, firm, operation or service of the private or public sector of the economy. This includes those people employed in agriculture, stock-raising, and related activities, as well as domestic employees. In other words, it concerns those workers who are entitled to be members of, or are members of any trade-union represented at the national level through the GSEE structure. Civil servants and their trade-unions that are represented on the national level through ADEDY are not part of the collective bargaining system of law 1876/90, since, until recently, their right to collective bargaining has not been recognised. Even though civil servants used to have the right to organise in trade-unions and to strike, they did not have the right to collective bargaining and the signing of collective labour agreements. A legislative settlement recognising the right of civil servants to engage in collective bargaining had been pending for the last three years and was finally adopted in August 1999. The new legislation recognises the right to bargaining not for pay issues (which are excluded from the collective bargaining process) but for education and training, health and safety, mobility, and trade-union rights.

On the basis of the current system, grounded on law 1876 of 1990, the Collective Labour Agreement may regulate the following: the signing, conditions, and termination of individual labour agreements falling under its field of jurisdiction; issues concerning the exercise of the right to unionise; the facilitation of unionism and the deduction of union contributions from payment and their reimbursement to the organisations entitled to them; social security issues, excepting pensions, in so far as there is no conflict with constitutional order and the policies of the state's social security agencies; issues relating to the exercise of business policy, to the extent that it has a direct effect on labour relations; issues concerning the interpretation of the collective labour agreement's normative conditions and the rights and obligations of the contracting parties; issues relating to the processes and conditions of collective bargaining, mediation, and arbitration; and finally issues concerning part-time employment, overtime work and work in shifts.

According to the system currently in force, Collective Labour Agreements fall into the following categories:

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1. The National General Collective Agreement (EGSSE), that sets minimum wages and salaries pertaining to workers all over the country and signed by GSEE on the one hand and SEB,GSEVEE and ESEE on the other.
2. The Sectoral or Industry Collective Agreements covering employees of many companies of similar or related industries or sectors and signed by industry Federations of employers and workers.
3. The Company Collective Agreements covering the employees of a single firm or operation and signed by company or plant level trade-unions and the management.
4. The National Occupational and the Local/Regional Occupational Collective Agreements, covering employees engaged in a specific occupation or profession, at the national or local/ level and signed by employers’ federations and occupational trade-unions.

On the basis of the above Collective Labour Agreement (CLA) categories, Company and Sectoral or Industry CLAs were for the first time included in the legal framework pertaining to collective bargaining in 1990. The former framework, Law 3239 of 1955, had been severely criticised from 1974 onwards as a constraining factor vis-a-vis collective bargaining. Yet the collective bargaining system had not always been restrictive. Progressive, exceptionally liberal, legislation had already been introduced during the first decades of the present century, but it was in the 1936-1940 Metaxas dictatorship period that collective bargaining was restricted. New restrictive labour legislation introduced in postwar Greece fostered the legal-administrative character of the labour relations system. Law 3239 dominated the national collective bargaining system from 1955 and remained in force until 1991, at which point the new one, based on law 1876/90, became operational.

Mandatory arbitration was a pivotal feature of law 3239. In essence it constituted a scheme for the regulation of collective bargaining by the state. The Greek system of collective bargaining remained a hybrid form subject to direct state control, that regulated both substantive issues and procedural ones. Law 3239 had specified the levels of collective bargaining and, therefore, the sort of bargaining units that were entitled to enter into predefined categories of collective labour agreements, such as the National General, National- and Local-Occupational ones, and Special CLAs. Thus it did not allow for Sectoral-Industry and Company CLAs. This limitation had a direct influence on the structure of labour unionism in Greece. By proscribing bargaining on the company or factory level (with the exception of rare Special CLAs) and on the sectoral-industry level, this legislation fostered a collective

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bargaining system that was neither centralised nor decentralised but rather widely fragmented, based as it was on the structure of occupational, cross-company and cross-sectoral unionism. This variety of trade-unionism along with the bargaining at the occupational level constituted

one form of organising collective labour relations during the first half of this century that was strongly promoted by the Metaxas dictatorship in 1936-40.

Yet the legal constraints on collective bargaining were not in a position to uphold and preserve a rather traditional and ossified bargaining structure. The official structure of collective bargaining in manufacturing was suffocating under the weight of the constraining legislation that proscribed CLAs on a company and sectoral or industry level. Thus after 1974 and the country's return to parliamentary democracy the development of the factory trade-union movement made company CLAs a consolidated part of an unofficial (not recognised by the legislation of the time) collective bargaining system. The reform brought about by law 1876 of 1990 acknowledged, very belatedly, company and sectoral-industry CLAs, which were already an established fact within the collective bargaining system. Moreover, law 1876 limited the jurisdiction of mandatory arbitration, by interposing a mediation phase and establishing a new Organisation of Mediation and Arbitration (OMED) as well as the independent Body of Mediators and Arbitrators.

According to the collective bargaining system now in force as set out by law 1876/90, if the bargaining process between the interested parties fails, then those parties can request the services of a mediator or make an appeal to arbitration. The appointment of a mediator can be requested by any of the interested parties. The mediator is selected out of a special list by all interested parties. In case of an unresolved disagreement, the mediator is appointed by draw. If the interested parties do not come to an agreement within twenty (20) days, then the mediator has the right to submit his own proposal to them; if it is accepted, the interested parties are called upon by the mediator to sign it, at which point it becomes equivalent to a collective bargaining agreement and all stipulations referring to the latter apply to it by analogy.

An appeal to arbitration can be made in the following cases:

a. During any phase of the bargaining process, by common consent of the interested parties.

b. Unilaterally by any party, insofar as the other party has refused mediation.

c. Unilaterally by employees' labour unions, to the extent that they agree to the mediator's proposal and the latter is rejected by the employer(s) representative(s).

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d. Specifically concerning company CLAs as well as collective agreements pertaining to public sector utility companies, the party that accepts the mediator's proposal rejected by the other party has the right to appeal for arbitration.

With the advent of the new legal framework on collective bargaining, elements of both continuity and change viv-a-vis the former system of law 3239/55 were introduced. An innovative and distinguishing mark of the new scheme is the mediator's right to submit a Proposal to the interested parties, as well as the fact that the aforementioned Proposal is a precondition for the relegation of the case to Arbitration. OMED's experience up to now, on the one hand, shows that it is almost always the labour organisations that turn to the services of Mediation (and Arbitration), and, on the other, that a pattern has taken shape concerning the function of Proposals submitted by the Mediators. Theoretically, the Proposal serves a double function: it is either a final bid to achieve convergence and agreement between the parties, or a method of relegating cases to Arbitration. In practice, however, the Mediator's Proposal mainly functions as a method of consigning collective disagreements to Arbitration; only secondarily does it function as a successful final attempt towards convergence and agreement. Thus in many instances the Arbitration of law 1876/90 is just a substitute for the Arbitration of law 3239/55. But as Table 4.1. indicates the role of arbitration has been restricted.

Table 4.1

Share of Collective Bargaining Disputes Resolved by Arbitration Awards.
Selected periods

We mentioned above that the mandatory Arbitration of law 3239/55 preserved an ossified structure of collective bargaining. Following the implementation of law 1876/90, the structure of collective bargaining has been undergoing an evident change. (cf. Table 4.1). The growth of collective bargaining is also linked to the changes in their structure

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as we observe an increase in the number of CLAs signed on the sectoral-industry and the company level. As the structure of collective bargaining changes, the referral of collective disagreements to Arbitration, as specified in law 1876/90, preserves the old ossified structure up to a degree. It is telling that a very high percentage of occupational CLAs are relegated to OMED, a percentage disproportional to their share in the national collective bargaining system. Appeals to OMED reproduce, among other things, the old structure of collective bargaining. The transition from a mandatory Arbitration system to one of more free collective bargaining and more limited mandatory Arbitration was effected as a result of the legislative shift from law 3239/55 to law 1876/90.

Table 4.2

Collective Agreements and Arbitration Awards by Category NUMBER OF CLAs SIGNED AND
ARBITRATION DECISIONS REACHED