Category: NEWS
Employers get more benefit from minimum wage than employees
Not only workers and their rights but also bind employers are protected by laws in Serbia. Nevertheless, protective work gear and properly secured workplaces are not available for many of these workers today. 42 workers died at work last year. This year six workers died and four people got serious injuries with a fatal outcome from January to March.
Ljubisav Orbović, president of the Association of Independent Trade Unions of Serbia, finds these figures unacceptable. He also adds that the unions asked the state to increase relevant inspection supervision.
Orbović points out that the authorities complained about the lack of inspectors to carry out such frequent inspections. The most problematic sector is the construction.
According to him, redundancies are not that frequent in Serbia due to the workforce deficit.
Serbia has nothing against foreign employers coming to the country because Serbian workers also go abroad as they pay higher wages. But the fact that foreign companies come and lower the price of the work is not acceptable. Such workers find themselves into the background in the labour market and often work without documents, unfortunately.
Concerning negotiating the adjustment of the minimum wage twice a year, Orbović says that there will certainly be negotiations this year as well, but that “they are not a decisive factor for determining the minimum labour price”.
He also adds that adjusting the minimum wage twice a year is a matter of inflation. Adjusting the minimum wage once a year is sufficient, in case if the inflation is within normal limits.
According to Orbović, employers get the opportunity to plan their businesses with the view of having cheap labour at their disposal due to the minimum wage. He adds that the minimum wage corresponds to the minimum consumer basket in Europe, but here that is not the case.
Source Link
Read moreHow Ukrainian farmers are using the cover of war to escape taxes
“Black grain” infuriates exporters playing by the rules On the lookout for “ordnance”photograph: getty images Since russia began its invasion in 2022, Ukraine’s economy has shrunk by a quarter. But the ravages of war are not the only reason for the government’s reduced tax take. Businesses are also making use of the chaos to dodge […]
Read moreMinimum wage serves more employers than employees
Laws in Serbia protect workers and their rights but also bind employers. However, many of these workers today do not have protective work gear, nor are their workplaces properly secured. Last year, 42 workers died at work. From January to March this year, there were six deaths, along with four serious injuries, with a fatal […]
Read moreKazakhstan and Vietnam launch visa-free regime
Photo credit: Vo Thuy Tien/Pexels The agreement between the Governments of Kazakhstan and Vietnam on exemption of visa requirements for the holders of national passports signed on August 21, 2023, in Hanoi will enter into force on May 25, Kazinform News Agency quotes official representative of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry Aibek Smadiyar as saying. The […]
Read moreGeorgia in IMF top 10 with highest unemployment decrease over 12 years
Georgia has been ranked ninth among the top 10 countries in the world with the highest percentage decrease in unemployment over the last 12 years in the World Economic Review by the International Monetary Fund. Photo: Nino Alavidze/Agenda.ge \ Georgia has been ranked ninth among the top 10 countries in the world with the highest […]
Read more74% of Ukrainian employers experience a workforce shortage
The problems in Ukrainian labor market were exacerbated by migration and mobilization. Russia-Ukraine war has significantly reshaped the labor market dynamics, with businesses across the nation grappling with a pronounced shortage of skilled workers. This trend emerges from a detailed studyconducted by the European Business Association in collaboration with Tetyana Pashkina, a noted expert in […]
Read moreManual labour is wide-spread in Serbia
Modul research on work skills reports that performing heavy physical work takes most of the working time of Serbian men and women with high school education, aged between 30 and 59. Nevertheless, social skills are used at work more by women, while using digital devices leads the way of highly educated men.
As the Modul research on work skills reports, “communication with people from the same company or organization” was the most used work skill in Serbia. It means that about 90 percent of respondents are engaged in verbal business communication with colleagues during working hours and approximately 70 percent of them in communication with people outside the company or organization.
Heavy physical work engages about 60 percent of workers, of which 26 percent do heavy labour half of the working time or more and 31 percent less than half of the working time.
Cognitive skills, such as reading instructions and working on calculations involving fractions, percentages, and more complex mathematical functions, are not used at work at all by more than 50 percent of men while only about 5 percent of workers use them most of their working time.
The situation with women does not differ much. Cognitive abilities are not used at all by more than half of the respondents and they are used during most of the working time by only 6 or 7 percent of them.
The difference between the genders in manual skills is more significant. The number of women who spend most of their working time on manual tasks is about 18 percent, while that number among men is about 5 percent higher (about 23 percent).
The president of the Association of Free and Independent Trade Unions (ASNS), Ranka Savić, says that manual labour is mostly required by low-budget foreign investments that are coming to Serbia, so these data are easy to explain. Overworking and spending one hundred percent of their working time in physically demanding jobs are among many workers’ complaints. It’s easy to set one of many cable factories as an example. The entire working day is spent by the workers standing, without ever having a chance to sit down and rest. Monotonous activities are performed by the employees with their hands constantly engaged. In retail the situation doesn’t differ much: the workers unload the goods, stack them on the shelves and operate cash registers all their working day.
According to Miloš Turinski, PR of the job search website Infostud, jobs such as administration and retail are mostly applied for by women, while more difficult physical jobs are mostly opted for by men. He also highlights that Serbia currently has the biggest deficit of trade and IT workers while speaking about the demand for labour.
Source Link
Read moreInsights into Serbia’s labor landscape: Employment trends and gender disparities
On this International Labor Day, the Republic Institute of Statistics released data indicating that Serbia had an employment rate of 50.2 percent in 2023, with nearly 2.4 million registered employees in the first quarter of this year. According to the institute’s report on May 1, the employment rate for women in 2023 stood at 43.8 […]
Read moreKazakhstan and ADB discussed prospects for cooperation in the coming years
The First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan Kairat Umarov met with Utsav Kumar, the newly appointed Country Director of the Resident Mission of the Asian Development Bank in Kazakhstan. The discussion focused on ADB’s future activities in the country and the key priorities outlined in the Bank’s Country Partnership Strategy […]
Read moreCitizens of Georgia will be able to travel to China without a visa from May 28
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia Aleksandre Khvtisiashvili met with the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to Georgia, Zhou Qian. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes information about this. According to their information, the ambassador of the People’s Republic of China in Georgia officially handed over a note to the Georgian side, […]
Read more