site.btaEmployers Threaten to Quit National Council on Tripartite Cooperation

Employers Threaten to Quit
National Council
on Tripartite Cooperation


Sofia, February 10 (BTA) - Employers on Tuesday threatened to
quit the National Council on Tripartite Cooperation (NCTC) if
the government does not immediately give up its practice of
getting around NCTC in dealing with crucial matters of social
and economic development.

In an open letter published by the Bulgarian Industrial
Association (BIA), employers said that NCTC, which is the main
social dialogue institution in Bulgaria, has not convened for
two and a half months, while at the same time the government has
been making important decisions in the field of social and
economic affairs.

A blatant example was the end-December adoption of amendments to
the Social Insurance Code giving socially insured persons the
right of free choice between universal pension funds and the
National Social Security Institute, said the letter, which, in
addition to BIA, was also signed by the Bulgarian Industrial
Capital Association, the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and
Industry, and the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists
in Bulgaria (KRIB).

Proposals for important new regulations are submitted to the
Council of Ministers without being discussed in NCTC, the letter
said. Employers find it particularly disturbing that new labour
and social insurance legislation is proposed by individual
government ministers and then submitted to Parliament by MPs,
not by the Council of Ministers, which is a way to get around
NCTC, and such amendments are adopted without coordination with
employers and trade unions.

It is common practice for Labour and Social Policy Minister
Ivailo Kalfin to present regulatory ideas to the public without
coordinating them with employers and trade unions through the
legally established procedure, the letter said. Even more
disturbingly, these ideas meet the expectations of trade unions
but conspicuously ignore the views and the interests of
employers, the letter said. An instance of this was the
criminalization of social security evasion.

The employers called on the government to rethink its conduct
and restore national social dialogue. Otherwise, there is no
point in employer organizations participating in what is a
non-functioning public body, they said, warning that they will
leave NCTC if the government does not mend its ways immediately.
PK/VE


/СН/