Estonia

The reality of the workers' financial participation is not strange to the social partners in Estonia, there are, really, some examples of application of some financial participation schemes.

It is the case of the share options, although this system is more frequently applicable in the trade sector, being applied to top management collaborators (engineers, directors, technicians, etc.) and not in the industry. They don't exclude the possibility of extending the possibility to buy shares to the all the workers.

The partner trade union supports the acquisition of the company’s shares but there is, an obstacle: the wages are too low in order to allow the worker to acquire shares of the company, even at a more accessible price. This is the reason why the workers' better paid only can achieved such. It has to be added the fact that the laws foresee, only, rules according to what the worker will only be able to sell their shares out of the company if nobody, from the company, intends to acquire them.

In what concerns the profit sharing, the employers defend its importance because they think that, besides increasing productivity, and increasing the workers' commitment, it will also increase the safety at the work place. On the other hand, they support that the profit generated by the company should be invested, allowing " indirect support" to the workers, namely through cheaper goods and higher pensions.

For the partner trade union, and to the employers, the minimum acceptable will be the profit sharing, because such won't mean, for the workers, an added risk, and for the companies these can "reward" the workers with a better performance. Who contributes more to productivity will be compensated.

In what concerns the creation of retirement funds, the partner trade union will support that if such does not mean any additional responsibility for the worker, because the wages are already too low to allow to the workers to remove part of it to the fund. On the other hand, such would be interesting, for the future. It would be a hypothesis to consider because the social safety has a great burden with the pensions. Despite the fact that such could be a risk. This because, in the past, many funds were created and actually, as there is no money, there are no funds.

Regarding the application of the financial participation schemes through collective bargaining such seem, to both partners, something complicated of achieve, especially because there are many companies where the representativeness of the trade unions is reduced or even null, being difficult to find a partner to negotiate. This in what concerns the employers, that add, that such is due to the fact of existing a lot of people that think that for being affiliated in a certain trade union, this will decide for them, as it was during the Soviet occupation’s period. This mainly concerning the oldest workers’ side. With the younger generation there is a higher opening towards trade unionism, because the old memories are already more subdued or are almost null.

On the other hand, the trade unions defend the wage bargaining as a priority. They could, eventually, accept to decrease, or not to increase, the wages and receive in return profit sharing, as a way of avoiding the production dislocation to other countries. The interest goes towards the maintenance of the work places.

Regarding the employers, they support that the existence of legislation doesn't influence anything, being sure that it is the economic market that decides. What decides the work places is the productivity, quality and good prices and not the legislation as it happened in the Former Soviet Union.

Despite the demonstrated opening towards the possible application of schemes of financial participation, despite both partners face such possibility as interesting, such it should only be applied in the future, because actually the priority, for the trade unions, is to obtain good wages’ increases, while for the employers the priority goes towards the profit of the companies and investment.