Assessing Labour Strength in Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia: How to Explain the Differences?

Kosović Nikola () and Copîl Daria
Additional contact information
Kosović Nikola: Central European University, Department of Political Science 9 Nador Street, Budapest, Hungary
Copîl Daria: Central European University, Department of Economics, 9 Nador Street, Budapest, Hungary

The European Journal of Applied Economics, 2016, vol. 13, issue 1, 36-46

Abstract: This paper assesses the current strength of labour unions in Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia and elaborates on the main factors that have led to the current situation. The first part of the paper includes an in-depth literature review of the current state-of-the-art in assessing the labour strength across Europe, with special emphasis on post-communist countries. The second part of the paper provides the assessment of labour union strength in the surveyed countries. The authors argue that there are significant differences in the roles of labour movements. Serbia and Slovenia quite differ, with extremely weak and extremely strong labour movements, respectively, while Croatia is located in between. Kosović and Copîl also elaborate on the causes of such weaknesses. They identify four main factors: communist legacy, nationalistic elites, economic crisis and foreign influence, and the lack of trust among citizens, and conclude that it is impossible to explain such a complex issue as labour strength by observing any of these factors separately. However, taken together, they all provide a quality explanation of the current union strength in the observed countries.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.5937/ejae13-9329 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vrs:tejoae:v:13:y:2016:i:1:p:36-46:n:5

DOI: 10.5937/ejae13-9329

Access Statistics for this article

The European Journal of Applied Economics is currently edited by Milovan Stanišić

More articles in The European Journal of Applied Economics from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().