Representatives of the health and education unions, and possibly other employees, who receive their salaries from the budget, will start negotiations on salary increases next week, reports TV Vijesti.
This was agreed at today's session of the Social Council, and the labor organizations are referring to the agreement on salary policy in the public sector for their request for a salary increase. It defined three years ago that if the gross social product grows by 3,5% or more, employees in the public sector have the right to a salary increase.
While the unions are preparing positions for negotiations, the Government is saying for now that regular wages are more important than a minimal increase.
"Today, the representative of the Ministry of Finance accepted our request and promised that next week we will start negotiations regarding our request to increase salaries. Today they tried to take the starting position with some arguments, however, we also showed with our arguments that there are grounds and that there is room for increase in wages. Whether we will do it through these amendments to the Law on Wages in the public sector, whether through an increase in the calculation value of the coefficient, that will be a matter of negotiation," said Zvonko Pavićević from the Education Union.
"The government's priority is the stability of public finances, and I believe that it is much more important that the amount of all salary payments in the public sector is more than running for a minimum salary increase, as is the case with the agreement that you spoke about a little while ago, because security in payments creates security in the state and the psychological stability of all of us", said Minister of Labor and Social Welfare Predrag Bošković.
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