4. EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION: EVIDENCE FROM ESTONIA
4.1. E MPLOYEE R EPRESENTATION AND P ARTICIPATION IN E STONIA ON THE B ASIS OF P REVIOUS S TUDIES
Partnership in Enterprise 42
Partnership in Enterprise 43 The workers gave a relatively positive assessment to their opportunities to make a statement or express dissatisfaction with their working conditions. 72% of workers found that they had such an opportunity (Antila, Ylöstalo 2003, p. 192). This share was slightly bigger in the study carried out by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions: 77% of workers claimed to have an opportunity to discuss their working conditions. Estonia stands out with this figure, as it is better than in ex-Candidate Countries and even in old Member States (see Figure 4.2).
70
26
62
32 73
25
71
27 77
17
66
25
0 20 40 60 80 100
Opportunity to discuss working
conditions
No opportunity to discuss working
conditions
Opportunity to discuss work organisation in the
case of change
No opportunity to discuss work
organisation
New EU Member States Old EU Member States Estonia
Figure 4.2. Consultations on working conditions and work organisation
Source: Working Conditions... 2003, p. 59 and the authors’ calculations from the Working Conditions database
91
81
38
93 93
27
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
With colleagues With direct manager With employees' representatives
New EU Member States Estonia
Figure 4.3. Discussion channels for working conditions
Source: Working Conditions... 2003, p. 60 and the authors’ calculations from the Working Conditions database
At the same time, we can say that Estonia’s communication channels and consultation opportunities do not differ drastically from other ex-Candidate Countries. Compared to the average of new Member States, however, Estonia is notable for its managers play a larger role as a channel than employees' representatives (see Table 4.3). In addition, consultation in Estonia is more often of informal nature.
When in new Member States 40% of employees claim that they discuss working conditions formally, in Estonia the figure is only 12% (see Table 4.1).
Partnership in Enterprise 44 Table 4.1. Form of consultation for working conditions (% of respondents)
Form of Consultation Candidate Countries
European Union
Estonia Consultation on working
conditions is regular 45 50 43
Consultation on working
conditions is formal 40 - 12
Source: Working Conditions..., 2003, p. 61 and the authors’ calculations from the Working Conditions database
Oxenbridge and Brown (2002) have found that informal partnership is more effective than formal partnership in forwarding and considering employees’ opinions, but only so in a situation were a representative (e.g. trade union) has a wide base. Their study revealed that informal partnership was more common in small and medium-sized production enterprises. The structure of Estonian business, however, does not give us reason to believe that there is more informal consultation due to size. There are relatively fewer micro-businesses in Estonia and, therefore, more small and medium-sized enterprises (see Table 4.2).
Table 4.2. Comparison of business structures in Estonia and other EU countries (% of companies)
Estonia (2003) EU 15 (2003) Candidate Countries
(2001)
Micro-businesses (0-9 employees) 79.48 92.37 95.13
Small businesses (10-49 employees) 16.66 6.48 3.86
Medium-sized businesses (50-249 employees) 3.17 0.94 0.84 Large businesses (500 and more employees) 0.41 0.21 0.17 Source: Estonia – Tax and Customs Board; EU 15 and Candidate Countries – Observatory of European SMEs 2003, No. 8, Highlights from the 2003 Observatory 2003/8, p. 13
Note: In the case of Estonia, only active business units who had declared their turnover at least once during the last year were taken into account
According to the Working Life Barometer, the employees themselves claimed that during the previous year they had relatively actively made suggestions to improve working conditions, methods or quality.
54% of employees had made one or several suggestions for improvement. There was a clear connection between suggestions and the employees’ level of education. Only 23% of employees with basic education and as many as 67% with higher education had made suggestions (Antila, Ylöstalo 2003, pp. 216-217).
The Working Life Barometer also studied the image of trade union activities. First, there are very few trade union members among workers and relatively little is known of their activities (14% know well or very well about trade union activities). Second, 38% stated that the reputation of trade unions was bad or very bad (37% considered the reputation positive). 37% saw no benefit in belonging to a trade union (19% thought it was beneficial). Antila and Ylöstalo concluded that trade unions had not managed to adapt to a changed environment and had not been successful in earning the trust of the public as defenders of salaried workers’ interests (Antila, Ylöstalo 2003, pp. 68-79). Based on these results we can conclude that trade union representatives do not play a significant role in employee participation today, which is also supported by the analysis of participation channels in Section 4.5.3 below. The same conclusion was reached in personnel management survey Cranet report on Estonia in 2004 – trade unions do not have a considerable coverage as employees’ representation body and are, thus, not a considerable channel of communication between employers and employees. Cranet survey is based on interviews with personnel managers (Personalijuhtimise… 2004, p. 11).
However, the coverage and popularity of trade unions in the country does not express, as a whole, how well are employees' representatives working in each company, and whether and what kind of role do representatives play in the companies where they exist. In order to get a better understand of these aspects, we conducted case studies in several companies. In the following sections we will explain our
Partnership in Enterprise 45 case study methodology and look at the study result in detail.