Dear colleagues,

The Parliament of the Czech Republic adopted definitely on May 23, 2006 new Labour Code by voting down President’s veto on this law. It has been the last moments´ decision, as regular elections took place on June 2-3, 2006 and it has not been sure that the law would be approved by the new Parliament. The election result is a perfect standoff – from 200 MPs the right wing has 100 seats as well as the left wing.

The important message for trade unions is the fact, that the new Labour Code, enforced by the left wing, won’t be neither abandoned, nor changed detrimental to employees and trade unions interests.

OS KOVO has expected this development and already in march 2006 adopted set of materials on collective bargaining in reaction to the new legislation. This is officially called “Campaign to Support Collective Bargaining for 2007”. This campaign has its official logo and its integral part is the first EMF common demand – Individual right to training guaranteed by collective agreements.
First part of the campaign composes of OS KOVO leadership representatives´ presentations at the regional conferences on this issue including comprehensive computer presentations. These conferences took place until now in following regions:

South-Moravian Region – April 13, 2006
Moravia-Silesia Region (North Moravia) – April 27, 2006
Ústí nad Labem and Liberec Regions (North Bohemia) – May 3, 206
Karlovy Vary and Plzeň Regions (West Bohemia) – May 24, 2006
Olomouc Region (Central Moravia) – May 26, 2005
Next conferences are planned and would be held in:
South Bohemia Region – June 22, 2006
Zlín Region (East Moravia) – May 23, 2006.

The presentation should be made in all the other regions in the autumn months 2006:
Praha and central Bohemia Regions
Hradec Králové and Pardubice Regions (East Bohemia)
Vysočina Region (West Moravia)

Promotion through our magazine KOVÁK would follow after this introduction in all the regions and the whole country, posters in regional variations statements for press, eventually press conferences.

We also prepare methodological instructions for proposals and negotiation of the company collective agreements that would be published at the beginning of September as a brochure and sent out to all OSKOVO company organisations. Seminars and training activities are being prepared for autumn months for experts – OS KOVO specialists - and also on the regional and national level for company officials who should negotiate company collective agreements. This is a big issue for our union as due to the liberalization of labour relations in the Czech Republic is the whole philosophy of collective bargaining changing – liberalizing and its importance would increase substantially. We will have to negotiate a lot of issues that have been guaranteed until now by the legislation.

Jaroslav Souček, OS KOVO Vice-president