The minister said he believed that the new law would produce results soon, including an increase in union membership. In this context, he said that the number of 424,964 union members, as evidenced in statistics from 2009, was too low.
"The government will do its best to reinforce the social dialogue and to see to it that social partnership should be a mechanism for preserving social peace, bargaining and agreement," he added.
Under the new legislation, an independent task force, set up by the minister following recommendations from social partners, will decide on the representativeness of unions.
Unions will be entitled to lodging complaints with the Administrative Court against the task force's decisions which they find unacceptable and the court is obliged to make a ruling within 30 days.
Mrsic explained that representativeness would be determined only if unions failed to agree on their negotiating committees, which he said had been frequent so far.
The lower limit for representativeness is that a trade union has at least 20 percent of workers out of the total number of workers organised in unions in a company or other entity.
Also, the new bill set out rules for craft unionism, including membership in craft unions.