The report is intended to provide insights into the state of social dialogue in the waste sector and to what extent the implementation of Article 4 of the EU Directive on Adequate Minimum Wages can contribute to the revival of collective bargaining in this sector.
The waste sector is poorly researched in terms of industrial relations, working conditions, and the challenges the workers face. This is all the more surprising given that workers in the sector (broadly defined to include recycling processes) are crucial to the goal of building a circular economy. This report sheds a light on the working conditions and perspectives for collective bargaining system in 12 Central Eastern European Countries (Bulgaria, Czechia, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia) to close the knowledge gap on the waste management sector.
This report was published under the project CEE CAW ‘Challenges for Organising and Collective Bargaining in Care, Administration and Waste collection sectors in Central and Eastern European Countries’, which was led by the Institute of Public Affairs (Warsaw). The other partners were the: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Sofia), Central European Labour Studies Institute (Bratislava), Lithuanian Centre of Social Sciences (Vilnius), Centre for Democracy Foundation (Belgrade) and the European Federation of Public Service Unions (Brussels).
Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion of the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
