The salary is regular. Every month exactly 450 euros arrive in my current account. On the very next working day, I am obliged to return 100 euros to my employer in cash. And so for two years, he says Center for Investigative Journalism of Montenegro (CIN-CG) a worker from the trade sector who wished to remain anonymous.
Her employer is not the only one who violates the Law on Minimum Wage, which was established after the introduction of the "Europe now one" program. Such or a similar experience is shared by 11 percent of respondents employed in trade or service activities who answered the CIN-CG questionnaire about the violation of their labor rights.
In Montenegro, more than 50.000 citizens are employed in trade and make up about 20 percent of the total number of employees in the country. Research by CIN-CG has shown that in this sector, everyone is not always protected from violations of labor rights, and it is also questionable how they manage to feed themselves with salaries, sometimes below the legally defined minimum, in times of inflation.
Since the Law on Minimum Wage in the amount of 1 euros entered into force on January 2022, 450, the minimum consumer basket has grown by more than 20 percent, in line with inflation.
Nevertheless, 90 percent of the respondents of our survey receive a regular salary. However, contributions on the entire amount of income are not paid to even a third of the respondents.
"The salary of 450 euros goes to my bank account, while we receive the rest in hand. As a result, the credit power of employees is reduced, and the payment of contributions is only in the amount of 450", explains one of the interviewees.
The survey pointed to some of the "creativity" shown by employers in an effort to avoid the legal obligation to pay the minimum wage.
Thus, the respondents state that they are paid the minimum wage through a current account, and then the workers have to return part of that amount to their employers. They state that the problem is also non-reporting of workers, i.e. illegal work. Then, registration of full-time part-time workers, for which they are paid the legal minimum of 225 euros via account, and the rest in cash. Requiring workers to spend part of their earnings at the workplace, buying items. Instead of employment contracts, work contracts are signed, which do not legally prescribe a minimum of 450 euros, and do not include contributions either.
The Union of Free Trade Unions of Montenegro (USSCG) warned against the use of such methods even before the adoption of the new Law on Minimum Wage.
The USSCG, together with the Administration for Inspection Affairs (UIP) and the then Government, prevented major abuses of the minimum wage institute, the deputy general secretary of the USSCG told CIN-CG. Ivana Mihajlovic.
He also claims that, today, the USSCG receives almost no complaints regarding the non-respect of the right to the payment of full wages and the payment of contributions to that amount. As a special challenge, he adds that it remains to prevent the abuse of overtime work "which in Montenegro is no longer an exception, but the rule".
Mihajlović encourages all employees to report any irregularities they notice at the workplace to the trade union and the UIP.
Registration is often in vain
When asked whether, if there was a violation of rights, they reported their case to the Labor Inspectorate, eight percent of our survey respondents answered yes. However, almost none of the aforementioned complaints were resolved in favor of the workers.
"They told me that I had no basis and refused to take the application," reads one of the answers.
"Employees have been registered on a part-time basis for years, this was the situation even before "Europe now one". The labor inspectorate found such a situation only once and ordered that the contract for two employees be changed to full-time, without checking the situation of the others," states an employee in the gaming sector in the CIN-CG questionnaire.
She also shared her experience working in a store:
"There was an anonymous report, the inspection came several times. Although none of the workers are registered full-time, and the store is open for more than 12 hours, they have not done anything. As expected, the employer passed without a fine, and we know that he has a relative in the inspection. Only the atmosphere in the collective long after that was full of mistrust and speculation about the identity of the person who reported".
However, there are many more who do not want to report violations of their rights to the Labor Inspectorate. As they state, the reason for this is distrust in the UIP, because they believe that corruption is a daily and normalized phenomenon in the work of this state body.
"The inspector comes to the shop and calls the director on his personal number to say that he has come to inspect and they usually come to an agreement," says one of the respondents of CIN-CG who works in the south of the country.
He claims that he has no right to sick leave, and his employer allows him only 12 days of annual leave. He receives a minimum salary, and is obliged to spend 50 euros every month trading in one of the facilities of the company where he is employed. At the same time, he states that the amounts that he and his colleagues spend in this way are recorded in a preliminary calculation and not fiscalized.
"I have no confidence in the Labor Inspectorate, they always settle and never establish anything," reads another of the answers taken from the questionnaire.
One plus three free
With the help of the Law on Free Access to Information, CIN-CG had access to the records of inspection supervision in the trade sector in the period from August 01.08.2023, 01.02.2024. until 112. concerning violations of the rights of employees. We analyzed XNUMX records.
Although illegal work is not explicitly mentioned in these documents, many inspectors noted cases of work without proper documents. So quite often, people from Kosovo, Albania, and Serbia work without proper papers, and the problem is particularly pronounced in the north of the country.
For illegal work, the Labor Inspection Act stipulates that, in addition to administrative measures and actions prescribed by law, the inspector is obliged to issue a decision to temporarily prohibit the work of the subject of supervision. However, this was not observed in any case where this violation was recorded. Thus, the subjects of the supervision passed with an indication of the irregularity and a deadline for its elimination, as well as a symbolic fine of 1.100 euros in total.
Overtime work was noted in a third of the inspections included in this finding. By law, overtime work is defined as working beyond the contracted working hours in the event of a sudden increase in workload or force majeure and in other exceptional cases. That they treat a permanent working day more than the contracted number of hours as an "exceptional case" is evidenced by numerous minutes, as well as lenient sentences. The fine for this offense is up to 1.100 euros.
As part of our survey, almost 17 percent of respondents confirmed that their employer requires them to work overtime as a form of compensation for the increase in earnings that occurred when the minimum wage was raised to 450 euros.
That overtime is abused during the season is also confirmed by the inspection of the market, which is part of one of the leading retail chains in the country, where it was established that employees worked over 50 overtime hours in one month alone.
The law on misdemeanors states that if the defendant commits multiple violations in a row, the authorized body can issue a single fine with a misdemeanor order that is equal to the sum of all individual fines determined in the minimum amount. There is no case of misdemeanor orders being issued for several isolated irregularities and summing up of individual penalties in these 112 records. Thus, in inspections where several irregularities were noted, the inspectors drew up a misdemeanor order for only one of them.
The law provides for the independence of breaking the law
The inconsistency of inspection practice is also reflected in the compilation of inspection reports, especially when presenting the factual situation. While some labor inspectors present a detailed factual situation (number of work permit, persons found at the workplace, type of contract and when it expires, whether there is a shift schedule, etc.), others state, without attached evidence, whether the subject of the inspection acted in in accordance with the law.
However, the biggest inconsistency lies in the fact that the same penal policy does not apply to everyone. This is how it happens that for the same irregularity in one subject of supervision, the inspector only pointed out and set a deadline for its elimination, and in the case of another, he issued a misdemeanor order with a fine of at least 1.100 euros.
CIN-CG requested clarifications from UIP. The different practice in sentencing is explained by the principle of prevention and the principle of proportionality.
"The effort of the labor inspection is to ensure that the practice of the inspectors' behavior is as uniform as possible, respecting the independence of the inspectors in their work as prescribed by law," the Administration points out.
They also claim that the citizens have confidence in their institution, which, they say, is evidenced by the number of initiatives from citizens that arrive every day, and since the beginning of the year, over 3.300 inspections have been carried out based on the initiative. They point out that there are also a large number of calls with questions for clarification of certain jurisdictions and legal regulations, as well as that they have continuous communication with citizens through various channels.
The annual work report for the past year was submitted by the UIP to the Ministry of Public Administration in April, so that the material in question could be discussed at the session of the Government of Montenegro and decided on the same. But that hasn't happened yet.
(Non) working Sunday for the list
The subject of our analysis was the supervision of leading retail chains for non-respect of workers' rights, issues such as overtime, non-working Sundays and so on. Out of 13 surveillances, ten were conducted by report. The objections were due to the census being organized on Sunday, unreported overtime work, as well as the denial of the right to weekly rest in the week when the census was organized. The fine imposed for such violations was 1.100 euros. The other three inspections were part of a regular inspection.
Particularly interesting is the surveillance that included as many as four markets of one retail chain, conducted on the basis of three reports. The same thing was noted in all the markets, a violation of the right to weekly rest, and the misdemeanor order for four establishments totaled 1.100 euros, but without an inspection order that overtime be paid.
The non-working Sunday in the trade sector was introduced in October 2019. Since then, there have been alternate dialogues about a possible compromise during the tourist season, but it still didn't happen. Currently, in the Assembly, the majority is against changing the non-working Sunday, and only the Constitutional Court can abolish it completely, for which the initiative was submitted by the Union of Employers.
President of the Trade Union, Novka Janković in her statement to CIN-CG drew attention to the fact that many, such as those employed in cake shops, tobacconists, flower shops, do not have the right to a day off on Sundays... However, she says that they also often work on Sundays, "when receiving goods and during the census, they remain employed indefinitely without any responsibility of the employer for such a state of affairs, and most often without paid overtime".
Living conditions
Trade workers represent one of the more financially vulnerable groups. The average salary for this sector in March this year was 704 euros, which is almost 15 percent lower than the average net salary in Montenegro for the same period.
For a worker who earns around 450 euros per month, which is half of our respondents, Monstat's minimum consumer basket seems unattainable, while the trade union consumer basket of USSCG is absolutely unattainable. For the first quarter of this year, it amounted to 1.900 euros, which is almost four times the amount of the minimum wage.
The relationship between the minimum consumer basket and the average earnings in trade shows that citizens often cannot cover their basic needs with income.
"We who live privately pay most of our salary for rent", is one of the answers in the CIN-CG survey.
"Essentially, we will always be on the minimum wage. Inflation always eats up as much as they raise the minimum wage, they have no substantive control. In the company where I work, I don't have holiday pay, transportation, or a hot meal. All this is compressed into the minimum," says another respondent.
"Salaries compared to prices are nothing. We don't have a normal life. We are not allowed to complain... We have to suffer," the survey states.
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