Trade unions in Bulgaria

1. Introduction
Trade union rights and the right of association of workers and employees in
trade unions and structures in Republic of Bulgaria are fundamental and irrevocable
constitutional rights and constitute an integral part of human rights.
Syndicate association is directly related to the employment and the realization of a
wide range of labor rights.
2. Legal grounds
The right to associate workers is a manifestation of the fundamental right of
association of citizens according to Art. 12 of the Constitution, which states that:
“Citizens' associations serve to satisfy and protect their interests”. The right is given
to persons in an employment relationship, but is also granted to persons who are
employed, but are not in the employment relationship - civil servants, cooperatives.
As a fundamental human right, the right of association is grounded in
numerous international agreements, of which Bulgaria is a party. On the first place,
that’s the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaims that: “Everyone
has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.; No one may be
compelled to belong to an association.”. Also, one of the cornerstone conventions -
N87, on the the freedom of association and protection of the right to organise, was
ratified in Bulgaria in 08.06.1960.
Convention 98, guaranteeing the right to free organization and collective
bargaining, has been in force also since 1960. It enriches the palette of trade union
rights by condemning acts of discrimination. Supports and facilitates the process of
free bargaining between workers and employers, determining working and pay
conditions through collective bargaining.
The main domestic legal act is the Labor code. It regulates Trade unions in
articles 33- 49. In Art. 34 it sets certain criterias for proclaiming an organization as a
representative Trade union:
● it shall have at least 50,000 members;
● have employees' organizations in more than a quarter of the activities defined
by code of the Classification of Economic Activities approved by the National
Statistical Institute, with members not less than 5 percent of the employed persons in
each economic activity or at least 50 organizations with not less than 5 members in
each economic activity;
● have local authorities in more than a quarter of the municipalities in the
country and a national governing body;
● have the status of a legal person, acquired under the procedure of Art. 49,
para. 1 at least three years before submitting the request for recognition of
representativeness.
3. Characteristics of the right of association in relation to trade unions
 ● Freedom of establishment. This means that both employees and employers
can freely set up an organization to protect their interests whenever they decide to
do so.
● Inadmissibility of requiring any prior authorization or subsequent approval by
judicial or administrative bodies for the establishment of a trade union. The
requirement of the legislator for registration of trade unions is not contrary to the
prohibition of the State imposing preconditions for exercising the right of association.
Such a contradiction does not exist because the entry regime is a registrative one
and not authoritative. The court can not refuse the registration of a trade union for
reasons of expediency. Once the established organization is not in conflict with the
legal order, the court is obliged to register it.
● The State guarantees not only the freedom to form a trade union but also the
free entry of every person into the already established organization. This rule also
applies to the voluntary leaving of the organization.
● The state has no right to dissolve a trade union.
● When exercising its right of association, its subjects are obliged to comply
only with the statutes of the organizations to which they are members. The only
limitation in this respect is that these statutes should be within the law. The purpose
of trade unions is to represent themselves in the protection of the interests of their
members in the field of labor and social security relations and on the issues of living
standards. Representation is done before the state authorities and the employers,
because it is up to them to satisfy the interests of the employees in these areas.
4. Types of trade unions
The Bulgarian legal order recognizes several types of syndicates. A syndicate
can be set up on three principles: place of work (in the individual enterprise), in terms
of production-territorial aspect (at the branch level) and territorial (at national level).
Therefore, the levels of representativeness of the trade unions vis-à-vis the
institutions and employers are again three:
● Syndicate in the local enterprise (upon workplace): represents before the
federation union composed of higher-level trade unions.
● Union of syndicates at branch/industry level which protects the employees’
interests based on their belonging to a particular branch of industry. I.e. the
Syndicate of Bulgarian Teachers
● Confederation of trade unions or federations representing employees at
national level: before the National Council for Tripartite Cooperation, before an
employer or a group of employers in the whole industry. The confederation
also concludes collective labor agreements to protect the interests of the
employees. To date, the only organizations recognized as such are Podkrepa
(“Support”) and Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Bulgaria
(KNSB). KNSB and Podkrepa have a similar structure of affiliated industry
federations/unions. There are 36 in the case of KNSB, of which the largest is
the teachers’ union, with around 75,000 members. KNSB also has six
 associated organisations representing the self-employed, home-workers,
farmers and others. Podkrepa has 25 affiliated industry federations. Around
20% of Bulgaria’s employees are union members. This number is under the
EU average - 23 %. However, it is still higher than in other countries, such as
France and Lithuania - 8 %, Estonia - 10 %, Hungary and Poland - 12 %,
Latvia and Slovakia - 13 %, the Czech Republic - 17 %. The highest number
is in Finland - 74 %.
● KNSB is a typical structure from the Communist period and Podkrepa grew
from the opposition to the then government. The commonest pattern is where
there are several confederations, whose rivalry at least initially was political or
religious. Bulgaria resembles 16 other EU countries in that sense: Belgium,
Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania,
Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia
and Spain. There are only five states where there is a single union
confederation for all, or almost all, union members. These are Austria, Ireland,
Latvia, Slovakia and the UK, although something very close to this pattern is
found in both Germany and Greece. In Denmark, Finland, Norway and
Sweden, and, to a lesser extent Estonia, divisions between the confederations
are primarily on occupational/educational lines, with different confederations
organizing manual workers, non-manual workers and those with a
graduate-level education.
5. Governing bodies of trade unions
The law empowers each trade union organization to independently determine
its bodies and its way of management and functioning in its statutes. The bodies that
comprise each such organization are:
● General Assembly - includes all members of the organization and takes the
most important decisions on its functioning by a majority. Its order of business is
governed by the Statute. It adopts programs and guidelines for the activity, resolves
the main issues of protection of the professional, socio-economic interests of the
members, discusses drafts for collective bargaining, agreements, etc.
● Management Board - еnsures the implementation of the decisions of the
general meeting, prepares the budget and takes into account the activities of the
organization, as well as fulfills the obligations of the trade union provided in the
statutes;
● Financial Control Commission - monitors the correct use of the revenues
from the membership fees and their allocation for membership in trade unions
federations at a higher level;
● Chairman and Deputy Chair - these are the "faces" of the organization at the
highest level. They participate personally in the process of tripartite cooperation and
discussions with different institutions.
● Congress - this is the supreme body of the union at the national level, which
takes the most important decisions for its overall development.
 6. Functions of trade unions
The main purpose of trade unions is to protect and represent workers'
interests before state institutions, government bodies and employers on issues
concerning work processes, insurances, and standard of living. To achieve this goal,
trade unions operate in several ways defined in the Labor Code and specified in their
statutes. These are:
Collective bargaining for provision of the employees with better working conditions.
Around 30% of employees are covered by collective bargaining in Bulgaria.
Bargaining takes place at both industry and company level (municipal level for
municipal employees) but company-level bargaining has become more important.
The figures show that at the start of 2012 there were 282,690 employees covered by
company-level collective agreements. This is around 10% of the total workforce, and
around 11% of all employees. The industries with the highest level of coverage at
company level are energy (47%), water supply (40%) and mining and quarrying
(34%). Those with the lowest level of coverage are construction (1%) and retail and
wholesale (1%). These figures do not include employees covered by industry level or
municipal agreements. The civil servants are also not included in the collective
bargaining just like in Portugal, for instance, and in contrast to Luxembourg.
Participation in the tripartite cooperation process (the so-called "trilateral"): together
with the representatives of the employers' organizations and the state
representatives, the trade union can protect employees’ interests in the NCTC. Only
the ones who can participate in this process are those with a recognized quality of
representativeness at the national level (Podkrepa and KNSB).
Participation in the discussions of state bodies and ministries of labor and social
affairs.
Organizing legitimate strikes and protest in defense of the employees’ interests.
Assistance in conducting public gatherings, meetings or demonstrations to influence
and protect employees’ interests against the state or employer.
7. Legal status of trade unions
The provisions of the Labor Code provide an opportunity for the trade unions
to acquire the quality of the legal personality. This quality is necessary for their legal
individuality and autonomy in participating in legal relations. Trade unions acquire the
status of a legal entity with their registration by decision of the district court and in the
register of the headquarters of the organization. The provisions of the Labor Code
provide the right of trade union organs in the enterprise to participate in the
preparation of drafts of all internal regulations and regulations relating to labor
relations. Entities of this right are the management of all trade unions in the
enterprise. The employer has the obligation to invite the trade union organs of the
enterprise to participate in the preparation of the projects. The bodies of the trade
unions are not obliged to participate. This is their right. Their involvement helps the
employer to take into account the interests of the employees in the relevant internal
regulations. Internal regulations and regulations are issued by the employer who
may or may not comply with the views expressed by the organs of trade unions in
the enterprise without the need to motivate its disagreement with these bodies.
Failure to fulfill the employer's obligation to invite trade union organisations to the
enterprise in the preparation of internal regulations and regulations relating to labor
relations results in the invalidation of the regulations. The signaling function of the
trade unions is the right conferred by the law on the one hand to alert the control
authorities to violations of the labor legislation and on the other to demand
administrative punishment for the guilty persons for violation of the labor legislation.
The state labor control bodies are obliged to carry out the necessary checks on the
signals made by the trade unions in order to ascertain the existence or absence of
violations. Trade unions and their affiliates are entitled, at the request of the
employees, to represent them as proxies before the court. This is the so-called
procedural representation of trade unions. The representation is carried out on
individual labor disputes between the employee and the employer. But it is also
admissible in collective labor disputes, as far as a legal dispute is concerned.
Subjects of trade union representation are trade unions, in the sense of their
headquarters, and divisions of trade unions. The right is granted to trade unions in
general, but they can authorize a person or persons to perform the representation.
An important feature characterizing the legal status of trade unions is the obligation
of the state and of the employers to assist the trade unions in carrying out their
activities.
8. Rights of the trade unions
● To participate in the preparation of internal acts in the enterprise, participate in
the preparations as the employer is obliged to invite the trade union to express
opinion on all prepared internal acts of the employer-art. 37 of the Labor Code. But
he is not obliged to comply with the opinion of the trade union, his obligation is
exhausted with the invitation.
● Art.42 states that : “The central management of trade unions or their
designated bodies or persons have the right to participate in the discussion of labor
and social affairs issues of employees of ministries, other departments, enterprises
and local government bodies.”
● Art.45 states that : “Trade unions and their affiliates are entitled, at the request
of the employees, to represent them as proxies before the court. They may not enter
into agreements, recognize claims, give up, withdraw or reduce the claims of
employees and receive sums for the account of the persons represented unless they
are expressly authorized to do so.”
Other trade union rights:
● The right of the trade union to participate in collective bargaining. The
exclusive right to conclude a collective agreement.
● Participation in the implementation of the state control over the compliance
of the labor law legislation.
● Rights relating to the settlement of the Collective labor disputes.
 ● Signaling function under Article 406 for compliance with labor law.
Also, the trade unions are benefiting from the right conferred to them by the virtue of
art. 46 which proclaims that the state and the employer have an obligation to
cooperate with the trade unions to carry out their activity. They are entitled to free of
charge movable and immovable property for the purpose of carrying out their activity.
9. Recognition of the representative trade unions
The recognition of trade unions is regulated in art. 36(1) which prescribes that:
“Employee’s organizations and employers' organizations shall be recognized at their
request for representative at national level by the Council of Ministers for a period of
4 years.”
The procedure for recognition of workers' and employers' organizations for
representatives at national level is done once in every 4 years. The President of the
National Council for Tripartite Cooperation shall announce in the State Gazette the
beginning of a procedure for recognition of representativeness 6 months before the
expiration of the term under para. 1.
The organizations of the employees and of the employers who wish to be recognized
as representative shall submit their claims within four months from the date of
promulgation of the notice under par. 3.
The Council of Ministers shall determine the procedure for establishing the presence
of the criteria for representativeness, subject to several principles, such as :
1. equality in the assessment of the criteria of representativeness and the existence
of a social mandate;
2. Transparency of the procedure for establishing the presence of the criteria for
representativeness under Art. 34 and 35;
3. ensuring the authenticity of the primary information;
4. Mutual control in determining the presence of representativity criteria.
The Council of Ministers shall pronounce with a decision within two months from the
receipt of a regular request from an interested organization. The refusal of the
Council of Ministers to recognize the organization of the employees or the employers
as representative shall be motivated and communicated to the interested
organization in the 7 days after its adoption. The organization concerned may appeal
the refusal to the relevant administrative court in accordance with the Administrative
Procedure Code. Representatives shall also be recognized as all units of an
organization recognized as representative at national level.
10. Conclusion
Despite the downfall in the number of people participating in trade unions
(During the Communist times the number was over 90%) their role is still important
and proving its validity. A recent successful example is the rise of the nurses’
salaries after continuous strikes. Therefore, the trade unions will retain their position
as being vital for the functioning of a well-established social system.
Bibliography:
Barnard, Catherine. EU Employment Law, Fourth Edition, Oxford University
Press, 2012
https://www.lex.bg/laws/ldoc/1594373121
http://www.worker-participation.eu
GLOBALISATION OF THE ECONOMY, EUROPEAN INTEGRATION
AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS - a research paper funded by Friedrich Ebert
foundation
https://www.bg-pravo.com