Why Has the Social Dialogue Broken Down in Poland?

It took a long time for social dialogue in Poland to take off. When the Polish tripartite institutions finally emerged (in 1994, at the national level), all other countries of Central and Eastern Europe had already amassed experience with tripartism. When the global crisis arrived in 2008, its impact on social dialogue in Poland was severe, bearing close resemblance to what happened in most of the EU countries. However, the process proceeded at an uneven pace and followed a curvy path: initially (2008-2009) there was a revival of social dialogue, as the social partners prepared a bipartite anti-crisis agreements spreading the benefits and hardships of the crisis on both sides of labour relations (January to March 2009). The agreement was partially endorsed by the government (even though some of the demands adrressed by trade unions were omitted). As the impact of the crisis (in fact, only economic slowdown materialized in Poland) proved relatively mild, the government, from 2010 onwards, began to pursue a unilateral policy of marginalisation of social dialogue which eventually led to the suspension of the participation of trade unions in the Tripartite Commissionfor Social and Economic Affairs, and all other institutions of social dialogue on June 26, 2013. The paper aims to analyze the reasons behind the breakdown of dialogue in Poland in the European (with the CEE given special attention) context, and efforts to restore dialogue. In January 2015 the President of Poland stepped forward with an initiative to reactivate social dialogue. Nevertheless, there is still a discrepancy between the postulates addressed by the trade union side and the employers.