ABSTRACT
The institution of social partnership and collective bargaining was created in Slovakia in 1990, before its chief components—the original associations of capital and labor—existed. The important pre-condition for social partnership and collective bargaining requires, first, the creation of appropriate institutional and legal conditions. The second necessary precondition seems to be the social acceptance of the institutions by social and political corporations as well as by the citizens themselves. The government of the Slovak Republic as the locus of executive power often declares in the tripartite bargaining process to be responsible for the state as well as the process of social transformation. The Austrian model of social partnership is attractive for the Slovak Republic mainly because of the positive impact it had on Austria’s postwar reconstruction and on the later stability of the Austrian economy.
