As COVID-19 epidemic opened up the issue of sick leave/furlough bonus, as well as the need to regulate more frequent work from home, representative of trade union confederations agree that rules of the game need to be determined.
Vice-President of the Confederation of Autonomous Trade Unions of Serbia, Duško Vuković, says that the amount of bonus is the biggest problem in case somebody gets infected. In the whole of public sector, he says, this bonus amounts to 100% of salary, except for the sector of culture.
‘These days we’re talking to the Ministries of Finance and Culture so that workers could get their full salary if they get infected by the virus and need to take a furlough or sick leave’, he says.
CATUS also thinks that self-isolation of 14-21 days should be considered by the employer as a type of work injury.
‘We can’t say where people get infected, maybe it could happen at work, too. For the benefit of company’s financial results, as well as employees, it is more effective for the employer to pay out the full salary to the isolated employee than to have them come to work where they could infect others because he could eventually get into a situation where there would be no one to do the job’, he explains.
Vuković says CATUS thinks that work from home should not be regulated by amendments to the law, but collective agreements because there are specifities and this should be the result of the agreement between trade unions and employers. ‘It would be good if the Employers’ Association of Serbia and representative trade unions made collective agreements covering all sectors and regulating this issue’, says Vuković. He also adds that trade union requests salaries not to be reduced while people are working from home, while this doesn’t stand for transport allowance and possibly hot meal bonus.
He confirms that the catering and hotel business sector has recently initiated a process of drafting a collective agreement between trade unions and employers.
Must Read
