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

THE POLITICS OF LABOUR MARKET ADJUST-
MENT IN POST-1989 POLAND
page 146
majority of cases, the coordination, monitoring
of, and information on these legal changes were
carried out by a small legal office responsible
for labour law within the Ministry of Labour
and Social Policy. On the eve of accession,
the last ‘Comprehensive Monitoring Report
on Poland’s preparations for membership’
published by the European Commission in
October 2003, reported two areas where further
attention and action was deemed necessary.
First, it stressed that the combination of high
unemployment and low employment rates
constituted a key economic issue that the
government needed to address. Secondly, the
Commission assessment reported as follows
on the state of legal readiness: ‘Poland’s
Labour Code is only partially aligned with
the acquis on labour law and completion of
transposition must be prioritized. Legislative
alignment still needs to be completed in the
fields of working time (including sectoral
working time), part-time work, transfer of
undertakings and posting of workers’ (EC
2003: 39). Some of these issues were simply
remedied in the law passed in November 2003.
However, since Poland joined the EU in May
2004, the pressure of conditionality and the
objective of accession have disappeared and the
transposition of European norms has become
a more politicized process. This was illustrated,
for instance, by the negotiations surrounding
the drafting of the law on information and
consultation of employees, which
required the design of institutions
for employee representation at the
enterprise level (a particularly salient
issue for unions).
4. POLICY OUTCOMES, EMERGING WELFARE RE-
GIME AND THE POLITICS OF REFORM
For the past twenty years, Polish labour
market policies were being put on the agenda
with varying degrees of priority, introduced,
reformed and fine-tuned. In the early 1990s,
a mix of universal and corporatist features
could be identified: an insurance-based income
replacement scheme with universal eligibility,
but decreasing levels of benefits. In later years,
policies concerning unemployment resemble
those in a minimalist welfare state: more
restrictive eligibility criteria, unemployment
benefits of shorter duration and lower coverage
rate. The social insurance logic is fading and
income support to the unemployed failed to
become a legitimate part of the welfare state.
Unemployment was institutionalized as a
social status giving limited rights while policies
heavily relied on inactivity benefits to ease exits
of the labour market, addressing primarily the
political threat posed by unemployment rather
than seeking to provide a universal support
to alleviate social deprivation associated
with joblessness. In 2002-2004, formal
and discursive compliance with European
guidelines and instruments served to reestablish
labour market policies as a central area
of public policy and triggered a re-orientation
in favour of activation measures. Despite this,
policies addressing labour market risks remain
essentially minimalist and residual; priority was
given to the fight against unemployment, as the
debate on reforming labour law exemplify.
Employment regulation, primarily based on
labour law, was gradually aligned with the
functioning of a capitalist labour market before
encountering the challenge of organising flex-