The Slovenia Times

Negotiations with the Unions: "Salaries should be based on capability and results"

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The Ministry for Public Administration is therefore preparing a plan to improve the pay system and reduce anomalies. Advantages should be seen in the consistent implementation of the reward structures and equal salaries for comparable roles.

The annual bonus payout is EUR 260m, which is 8% of all salaries in the Public Administration. Furthermore, paid bonuses did not change during the crisis and therefore did not provide a clear incentive. Can we expect some drastic changes now?

The allocation of bonuses should be justified. Furthermore, there is too much centrally defined automatism which makes autonomous decision-making difficult, especially regarding planning and optimisation of resources. The problem itself is highlighted through the over-normalised system and in the lack of correlation between payment and the actual results.

In 1997, Germany introduced a flexible component to salaries which depends on work effectiveness. A year before that, the Swedish unions agreed to salaries tied to work performance ... Is effective cooperation with unions possible in Slovenia?

I must say, social dialogue is well-developed in Slovenia and so is the cooperation with the unions, despite the fact that there are more than 40 of them in the Public Administration, which also hinders effective dialogue. We strive to encourage unions with similar interests to connect in to confederations, as is typical in many other countries. It is difficult to manage and coordinate the interests of the various unions, who are fighting for their membership, while representing the same activity in the Public Administration. In upcoming negotiations, I am afraid that most of the unions do not believe in our goals. They are sure that such a reward would not only be subjective, but would be also based exclusively on the results of the work. Therefore, we strive to ensure the criteria and measures of work performance are clearly stated in cooperation with the individual unions.

In terms of the use of public money, the scale and structure of the Public Administration, Slovenia is comparable to the United Kingdom (UK). However, since 2010, promotion in the UK has been based on merit. Is the employment and promotion process in Slovenia fair and transparent?

In Slovenia, promotion is based primarily on meeting the prescribed criteria such as professionalism, scope of work, reliability, creativity, etc. Furthermore, promotion to a more demanding work position requires suitable work experience, so it is about the combination of merit and the number of years of work. The seniority in terms of age has no direct effect on progress, unless it is linked with work experience in the specific field of work. The problem is that, in practice, the absence of more precise criteria and measures for promotion leads to subjective judgement by the superiors. Indeed, promotion to a large extent become automatism; salary classes are permanently acquired rights and are not subject to revision according to capabilities and work results.
The Public Administration can be attractive in terms of career development. For example, top management positions are selected among candidates through open competition. For those who are already employed at the Public Administration, there is an internal labour market, which enables candidates to apply through an internal selection process for positions within the Public Administration.

The variable component of the salary is predicted. What level of variation is there?

If the changes that we are considering now with the unions will be enforced, then employees could, based on work productivity, get up to two base salaries on an annual level. Eligibility for the reward of work performance should be checked every three months and if the conditions are met, the employee may receive up to 50% of base salary each time.

Does the Public Administration have too much bureaucracy? Annually, there are more than 217,000 reports even though many do not result in any progress. How can the Public Administration streamline this?

With appropriate organisational measures it is possible to achieve time savings at the level of individual authorities. This encompasses measures that lead to streamlining of administrative tasks and optimisation of the reporting system. Not only would we achieve time savings, but also financial ones. We could combine support functions, move location-dispersed bodies in certain urban centres to a single address and stop outsourcing support services.
 

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