Economic crisis and its influence on the liberalization of labour relations: lithuanian case

Growing unemployment rate increases the emigration flow in the country which affects general economic indicators of Lithuania: the taxes isn‘t collected and the added value made by Lithuanian people are being createded in other countries. Country policy plays very important role in the process of unemployment rate increase too. Besides, employers in these favorable conditions can exploit workers by obliging them to work overtime without paying extra money. The chosen theme is relevant due to the fact that rapid technological advances, increase of competition and changes in consumers demand requires the traditional labor relations model in Lithuania to be adapted for very dynamic economic changes. In this master’s thesis labour law changes which were implemented during economic crisis in Lithuania and other foreign countries - Denmark, Estonia – are being analyzed. Estonia was chosen as the country with which Lithuania had experienced post-communist transformations. Estonia is known as post-communist transformation leader. Denmark was chosen because of being an example in Europe how to implement “flexicurity” model ant how to achieve economic growth, high employment and sound public finances at the same time. In master’s thesis the relationship between economic crisis and the liberalization of labour relations in the Republic of Lithuania is detected and revealed. It is compared Lithuanian and foreign labor laws change provisions in 2009 - 2010, it is submitted their summaries to discuss these rules into practice, to solve problems and proposals of Lithuanian legislature. The final conclusion is that in order to revive economy, it is necessary to create conditions for business to attract investment. In order to increase the competitiveness of countries it is necessary to liberalize the labour markets. However, liberalization should not be only neoliberalistic goal, but also be the way to modernize labour relations. Modernization could be implemented through “flexicurity” strategy, because enterprises and workers can both benefit from flexibility and from security. However, this can only be achieved through negotiations between social partners. Though, all eforts to achieve such compromise in Lithuania is interfered by the lack of democratic tradition in the society