Workers' shareholding and participation

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In Serbia, at the moment, there are simply no forms of workers' shareholding or participation of workers in the consultation and decision-making in commercial enterprises. On the other hand, the process of democratization of working relations caught, first of all, the European space, and then the other parts of the world. Set with clear economic and social content, without ideological burden, workers' shareholding and participation conditions have to expand, strengthen and become one of the important factors in the structure of modern society. The process of transformation of social ownership, in our area, began with the workers' shareholding. Workers employed in the company, were given the right to buy internal shares under privileged conditions. That was the main form of transformation. The starting point was the confidence in the company to initiate, organize and manage the process of transformation in their own interest. The funds obtained through the issuance of shares by selling a part of the company or the whole companies, according to the express provisions of the law, belong to the company or its complex form. Later, already in 90s, workers' shareholding and participation unjustifiably attributed to ideological properties, which led to their complete exclusion from economic and legal system. By subsequent regulations, privatization was almost exclusively reduced to the sale, leaving and excluding all other possible different forms of privatization. This approach lost the sight of the basic economic objectives of privatization: there has been no acquiring of new capital or new investment cycle; there was no rise to new business entities able to receive and fertilize the capital, nor has the privatization been the impetus for the dynamic development of the economy and employment. Economic enterprises were extinguished, and unemployment increased. And now, in a much less favorable economic and social climate, it is reasonable to raise the issue of whether there is still a requirement by the introduction of the workers' shareholding and participation for activation of the inner forces of taking upon themselves the responsibility for the crisis. The previous condition for this is certainly the creation of a legal framework for the establishment and development of the workers' shareholding and participation. This would at the same time bring us closer to the legal system of the European Union and its member states, in which the workers' shareholding and participation are wide set and regulated institutes by the law.