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Latvian company legislation by and large provides for a two-tier structure, with a management board and a supervisory board. However, like its neighbours Latvia has no legal requirement nor any significant practice of worker participation at board level.
After Latvia’s independence in 1991, trade unions experienced a sharp fall in influence and membership. Nowadays, they represent roughly 20% of the workforce (membership in the public sector is much higher than in the private sector). The conclusion of collective agreements is mainly limited to the enterprise level as there is still hardly any dialogue at sectoral level and none at regional level. Theoretically, sectoral agreements can be extended where the employers subject to the agreement employ more than 60% of all employees in the sector. In practice, however, there is no sectoral agreement which meets the criterion. Also, the number of collective agreements concluded at enterprise level remains low: they only cover approximately 20% of Latvian employees.
Although the direct election of “authorised employee representatives” by the workforce has been possible since 2002, the main channel for employee interest representation at the workplace remains the trade unions. Where there is both a trade union and an authorised employee representative in the same company, only the trade union has the right to conclude a collective agreement. Both trade unions and authorised employee representatives have the right to be informed and consulted on a number of issues, including the company’s economic situation and social affairs and decisions which concern the interests of employees and which may substantially affect wages, working conditions and employment. In practice, workplace social dialogue mainly takes place where unions are strongly represented, which de facto leaves a large proportion of Latvian employees without any interest representation at all.
Source: The European Company - Prospects for worker board-level participation in the enlarged EU (edited by Norbert Kluge and Michael Stollt). Brussels 2006.
The country reports on board-level participation in the new member states are available in several languages.
Documents
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No debate has developed regarding SE regulations and employee representation rights at board level.
The trade unions have shown no significant interest in employee representation on European bodies. They take the view that this may allow companies to oust trade union organizations, replacing them with more amenable (to them) forms of representation. Recently, participation in EWCs has been more active, which is a positive tendency. Trade unions are beginning to perceive it as a beneficial tool.
The government is not encouraging worker participation at board level or other forms of employee representation.
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(3) Transposition process
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Council Regulation 2157/2001 on the statute for a European Company (SE) was implemented in Latvia by the Law on European commercial companies, which integrated Directive 2001/86/EC. The Law on SEs was adopted on 10 March 2005 and came into force on 7 April 2005. (Documents)
The text of the directive was transposed into Latvian legislation as closely as possible to the original, without real reference to the country’s specific needs. Employees’ participation rights in an SE are based on the employee participation rights existing before the SE was established.
During preparation of the law there were consultations with the Latvian Free Trade Union Confederation and the Employers’ Confederation. Overall, they supported adoption of the draft law, making a number of new proposals, some of which were introduced into the text. There were no direct consultations with foreign experts, but the Danish experience in this respect was referred to.
Nothing has been done to inform the general public and a communication plan for that purpose has not been developed.
A European company, as a new kind of holding company, can be registered in the Commercial Register of the Republic of Latvia by means of a special application form. No SE had been registered by April 2006.
Agnese Puntuza, Latvian Trade Union of Construction Workers (LCA)
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There has been no specific research on this topic. SEs and workers’ participation at board level have not been on the social partners’ agenda. In 2006 several research projects were launched to analyse labour relations and employee representation structures in Latvia, promising results at the end of 2006.
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(5) Other relevant information (Info-Box)
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Information resources
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