Collective redress and workers’ rights in Slovenia

Abstract

In 2017, the Collective Actions Act introduced a new type of lawsuit – the collective action – into the Slovenian legal order. A collective action can be lodged in cases of instances of so-called ‘mass harm’, including mass violations of workers’ rights. This could improve the effectiveness of enforcement of workers’ rights in practice. Instead of a number of individual labour disputes concerning the same or similar violations of workers’ rights, a collective action can be lodged by trade unions or other representative collective actors in this field. Both opt-in and opt-out approaches are possible and the decision on this is left to the discretion of the court. Despite many positive aspects, only one collective action in the area of labour rights has been lodged to date. In this contribution I analyse legal regulation of the existing collective redress mechanism and possible reasons for deficiencies discerned in its functioning in practice.