Trade unionists in Bulgaria are preparing to negotiate the country’s first collective agreement for civil servants.
The move follows a joint complaint to the Council of Europe, where Bulgarian unions CITUB and Podkrepa, together with the ETUC, successfully demonstrated that the government was not respecting civil servants’ fundamental bargaining rights.
As a result of the ruling, and after long discussions with unions, a Bill has now been drawn up for a change of law in Parliament. “It is not everything that we wanted, but it is good enough,” said CITUB (Confederation of Independent Trade Unions of Bulgaria) President Plamen Dimitrov. “It gives civil servants the right to organise and, more important, to collective bargaining.” The union is already making plans to act on the new law, and putting together proposals for negotiation.