All main trade union confederations in Serbia agree that the guilt lies with all social partners – employers, Government and the unions themselves. Still, the main culprit for them is the Government with its continued effort to eliminate or restrict labour and trade union rights. Namely, in order to attract foreign investors, it has been giving them the incredibly high subsidies and – what’s the worst – promising them not to be subdued to any trade union “pressure”. Such promises have been taken by the international capital quite seriously and made good grounds for a hyper-exploitation and merciless mobbing.
“There is a growing part of working population that is not unionised because they work from home or have fixed-term contracts. These people are ruthlessly exploited and unable to protect themselves. They enjoy only some of the labour rights and they are mostly the youth. Unions do have a problem when it comes to approaching and organising them”, said Ljubisav Orbovic, President of the CATUS and added:”The youngsters often don’t know what a union is. Our strength was in big factories and offices, where people worked under similar conditions and were able to join unions easily and have their interests articulated by them. Nowadays, when many men and women work occasionally or from home or with fixed-term contracts, they know little about the unions. We have to find new ways of approaching and unionising them”.
“Recently, a few groups of workers with atypical contracts asked us to start talks with them about a possibility of organising unions in their domains. It means that by the passing of time these workers have understood they were not willing to go on in the same old way and let the employers exploit them indefinitely. I have the impression that we shall be called to give this kind of assistance more and more frequently”, concluded Orbovic.
Many problems arise from the fact that, according to the law, unions can protect rights and interests only of workers with full-time contracts, and not of those with atypical ones. This reduces the number of potential members to a half. Besides, the company union’s status of legal entity is still obtained by the registration in the Ministry of Labour – a procedure that led to the establishment of round 30,000 of them and made the creation of a unique solidarity or strike fund impossible. Finally, all amendments to labour legislation have constantly been restricting workers’ and trade unions’ rights, first those of 2001, then those of 2005 and definitely those of 2014.
