Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

THE POLITICS OF LABOUR MARKET ADJUST-
MENT IN POST-1989 POLAND
business associations that brought together
the Confederation of Polish Employers
(Konfederacja Polskich Pracodawcow – KPP) 21 ,
the Business Centre Club, the Polish Chamber
of Commerce, and the Association of Polish
Artisans, which represented small-sized craft
businesses. This was a well-coordinated effort
benefiting from the administrative support and
technical analysis of the Business Centre Club.
The coalition worked to prepare a detailed
and radical draft bill, aiming to significantly
increase flexibility and reduce labour costs.
Their first proposal was a draft bill focusing on
improving conditions for small and medium
enterprises (SMEs) 22 , a theme to which both
the Freedom Union, the party of Leszek
Balcerowicz, and AWS were attached; but, in
fact, a number of measures adopted within this
frame concerned all enterprises and were aimed
at reforming the labour market in general. The
draft included measures concerning overtime
and fixed-term contracts, which were of
interest to all employers (ibid.: 229-230).
The way in which the bill was presented
largely explains its rejection. Unions saw it as a
provocation. The text had been shown neither
to the government nor to the trade union
Solidarnosc before reaching parliament. It was
discussed only in a specific SME committee, a
favourable audience a priori, but a committee
with no history of passing legislation and no
political weight (ibid.: 232). AWS
and SLD were committed to rejecting
page 140 the proposal. After the SME bill was
rejected in its first parliamentary
reading, business associations and
their political allies turned to a more efficient
active lobbying strategy, i.e. talking to
politicians of the opposite side to see which
elements could become acceptable and trying
to persuade them, lobbying the government
directly and using personal channels rather
than institutional ones (ibid.: 232-234).
In the meantime, a distinct project explicitly
aiming to reform the Labour Code was taking
shape. During the debate on the SME bill,
both left- and right-wing political forces were
publicising proposals concerned with the
duration of the working week and working
time, primarily aiming to satisfy union demands
for a shorter working week. This led to two
draft bills: one from the governing coalition
and one from the opposition, both appearing
sympathetic to unions’ concerns.
The first draft bill was proposed in the Senate
by Solidarnosc and only supported by a faction
of the related political party. It focused on two
measures: reducing the 42-hour working week
to forty hours with no reduction in pay and free
Saturdays in place of old designated free days.
The proposal also included practical provisions
for the implementation of these changes in a
worker-friendly way, and other pro-union or
pro-worker adjustments to regulations (ibid.:
235-236).
The second draft bill was proposed by SLD in
the Sejm. It was supported by the leadership
of the party and was more likely to represent
a compromise between the pro-union and
pro-business factions. The bill ‘was designed
to ensure that AWS could not take the
credit amongst workers, as the party that had
shortened the working week. However, it also
had something to offer employers and was, to
some extent, inspired by the small enterprise
bill. The bill simply declared a 40-hour week