- The “Forest” expert team suggests a collective holiday and paid leave as a cost-saving measure
- Trade union organizations divided
BANJALUKA – The expert team for the recovery of “Forest of the Republika Srpska” as one of the ways to achieve financial savings in this company devised the sending of workers to a collective annual vacation and paid leave, reveals CAPITAL.
The workers of “Forest of Republika Srpska” are on collective annual vacation until January 14, and after that they will be sent on paid leave or, more popularly, on waiting until the end of January, during which they will receive 70 percent of their salary.
Acting General Director Blaško Kaurin made this decision on the penultimate day of last year, and how CAPITAL learns, this was done at the suggestion of the Expert Team, which includes the president of the Supervisory Board of this public company, Biljana Marković, and the Assistant Minister for Forestry, Radenko Laketić.
“In the period from January 1 to 14, annual vacation will be used in all organizational parts, with the fact that it is necessary to organize active duty, i.e. the work of services where necessary (census work, security service, reception and distribution of mail and other services as necessary) )”the decision states.
The directors of the organizational units, it is further said, are required to, depending on the weather conditions for the normal development of regular activities from January 15 to 31, make a schedule for sending workers on paid leave in accordance with the positive opinion of the representative trade union, and Article 91 of the Law on Labor and Article 52 of the Collective Agreement for “Forests” employees.
Article 91, referred to by the “Forest” Administration, states that “the employer, in consultation with the trade union, may direct the worker to paid leave (waiting) in the event of an unplanned temporary reduction in the volume of work at the employer, as well as reasons of an economic-financial or technical-technological nature.” .
“During the duration of the leave, workers are entitled to salary compensation in the amount of at least 50 percent of the worker’s average salary earned in the previous three months. The method of posting workers, the length of time, mutual rights and obligations of workers are regulated by the collective agreement”says the Labor Law.
Nevertheless, the Collective Agreement gives greater rights to workers and says that “on hold” they receive 70 percent of the average salary.
“In addition to the fact that the workers receive 30 percent less salary, they do not have the right to a hot meal or other benefits, so in those organizational parts where the trade union organizations have given consent to send employees to wait, the workers will receive 500 marks less each.”explains one of the union representatives who insisted on anonymity.
If all 4,700 workers were put on hold and all received reduced wages for January, he explains, more than two million marks would be saved.
“But this is not possible because not all workers can be sent to wait, because some services have to work, as well as because not all farms have the same weather conditions, so there is no need to send everyone to wait. But even if everyone was instructed to wait and if two million marks were saved on one salary, it would not play a big role, nor would it help too much in overcoming the desperate situation.”says our interlocutor.
He says that despite the position of the “Forest of Republika Srpska Forest” (JUSO), which gave a positive opinion on the proposal to send the workers to wait, more than half of the trade union organizations by organizational parts did not give their consent.
“For workers who do not work due to difficult weather conditions, the working days can be recorded as paid leave and in that way wages can be calculated, as was done for the period from December 23 to the end of that month, but the union cannot give consent in advance to the workers they calculate salaries as if they were pending”explains our interlocutor.
He also reminds that this is not the first time that JUSO, instead of defending the rights of workers, makes moves in favor of the Management, pointing out that he wrote about it and CAPITAL.
The union called on the workers not to sue Šume for unpaid wages
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Source: capital.ba
