From guaranteed employment to governed unemployment: trade unions and labour relations in Bulgaria, 1989–1997

This article examines Bulgaria’s post-socialist labour transformation through the emergence of unemployment during 1989–1997 and its effects on trade union representation, collective bargaining and the institutional meaning of employment. It argues that Bulgaria was distinctive not for guaranteed employment under state socialism, shared across Central and Eastern Europe, but because the early transition combined a severe labour-market shock, delayed and politicised enterprise restructuring, intense union involvement in tripartite institution-building and a weak state in which unemployment became an administrative category and a terrain of social conflict. Drawing on primary and institutional sources, including labour-market policy reports, legal texts, industrial-relations studies, parliamentary records and analyses of protest and collective bargaining, the article reconstructs the shift from guaranteed employment to governed unemployment. Governed unemployment emerged through the simultaneous construction of labour-market administration and plural industrial relations: unemployment was recognised and managed as a permanent social risk, while the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB) and the Confederation of Labour Podkrepa played an influential role in collective bargaining and tripartite institutions amid unemployment, restructuring and declining employment security. The Bulgarian transition therefore expanded institutional representation while redirecting union action from defending guaranteed employment towards negotiating redundancy, compensation and social peace.