Regulating Temporary Agency Work Through Collective Bargaining: Insights From The Slovenian Experience

This article examines whether collective bargaining in Slovenia meaningfully supplements the statutory regulation of temporary agency work (TAW). Using a qualitative socio-legal case-study design, it combines targeted doctrinal analysis of the EU and Slovenian legal framework with qualitative content analysis of all 47 valid national-level sectoral collective agreements, supplemented by two illustrative company-level agreements and selected worker-organisation examples. The findings show that sectoral collective bargaining regulates TAW only selectively: most agreements contain no explicit TAW clauses, while most existing clauses mainly restate equal treatment guarantees or improve transparency. More robust protective supplementation appears only in a limited number of sectoral provisions and more clearly at company level, notably through quota rules, training access, and negotiated pathways to direct employment. The article concludes that collective bargaining in Slovenia functions not as an autonomous TAW regime but as an uneven supplement to a relatively developed statutory framework.