She was elected to the National Council as a representative of employees.
In the National Council, she is:
- Head of the Interest Group of Employees,
- vice-president of the Mandate and Immunity Commission,
- member of the Commission of Economy, Trade, Tourism and Finance,
- member of the Commission for Social Care, Labour, Health and the Disabled.
About the member of the National Council
Lidija Jerkič has a bachelor’s degree in law and is the president of the Association of Free Trade Unions of Slovenia (ZSSS), as well as president of the Trade Union of Metal and Electro Industry of Slovenia (SKEI).
After completing elementary school, she enrolled in gymnasium, later graduated from the Faculty of Law in 1988, and passed the bar examination.
In 1988, she became employed by the Association of Free Trade Unions, namely its department for legal advice – as it was called at the time, where she provided workers with legal advice, assistance with filing applications and appeals, as well as representation in court.
After the reorganization of trade unions in 1990, she was employed as a legal advisor by the Trade Union of Metal and Electro Industry of Slovenia until 1998, when she became the secretary for legal questions. At the IV. Congress of SKEI, she was elected president of the trade union and has remained in this role for three terms (the latest congress took place in 2016).
She was also a member of the presidency for the Association of Free Trade Unions of Slovenia – an umbrella association for SKEI – and was elected to the National Council of the Republic of Slovenia in 2007 and was also its vice-president.
During this period, she served as a member of the management board for the Employment Service of Slovenia and an assembly member of the Pension and Disability Insurance Institute of Slovenia, worked in multiple spheres and societies, wrote expert articles, publications, and handbooks for trade-union activities, taught programmes for union functionaries in the field of employment relations and union work, as well as mentored some students in their assignments. She was president of the Expert Committee for Economic and Social Affairs of Slovenian Sovereign Holding and a member of the European Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (CESI). In international union organisations, she is a member of the executive board of IndustriAll and a member of the executive board of the European Confederation of Independent Trade Unions. In 2017, she was elected to the council for the Pension and Disability Insurance Institute of Slovenia.
In October 2017, she was first elected president of the Association of Free Trade Unions of Slovenia (ZSSS) and was re-elected to this position in 2022.