Fundamental rights related to social partners

Social partners agreed on the disparity between the legal framework regarding social dialogue and the practice. It was said that even though the legal base was favourable, the willingness on the side of the public authorities to consult and negotiate with the social partners was not sufficient. Many of the organisations participating in the discussion were part of the Tripartite Council, which gave them access to the policymaking process. However, the extent to which social partners were actually heard by the public authorities was not satisfactory, in their view.

It was noted that both social partners and CSOs would often be informed rather than consulted (sometimes ex-post), and they did not have sufficient time to prepare a response that would be taken into account in the drafting of policies. The Lithuanian authorities, however, claimed that they had not received any complaints regarding social dialogue and that the number of meetings had even increased and intensified on all levels due to the digitalisation brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. The latter was also pointed out by a social partners' representative. Furthermore, the representatives of the public authorities noted that all draft laws were publicly available online on the website of the Parliament and were open to comments.

According to the participants, the right to strike was enshrined in Lithuanian law, but in practice the legal framework made strikes very difficult to organise; it was also said that the extent to which trade unions could utilise this right was limited. Furthermore, trade union representation was very low, and only a very small fraction of private sector workers was unionised, while employees in the public sector faced stricter strike regulations according to the Labour Law.

Finally, according to the participants, the consultations on the Recovery and Resilience Facility had not been constructive. There had been too many participants in the meetings, very little time, the presented information was often imprecise, and there had been no opportunity for genuine discussion. Furthermore, no continuity to the consultations had been ensured and social partners had no access to the monitoring of policy implementation.