Two employees of the company "Voli" Đorđije Milić i Nikola Zoric They filed a lawsuit against the company for unpaid overtime, work on weekends and holidays, as well as a lawsuit to annul the annex to the employment contract that transferred their workplace from Podgorica to Danilovgrad.
When asked by "Vijesti", the company "Voli" stated that they reject all claims made by their employees.
"We reject all allegations. The court proceedings initiated by Milić and Zorić are ongoing, we leave it to the institutions of the system to make a decision. We will fully respect it and will not comment on the case further," the company announced.
Milić and Zorić allege that as waiters at Volijev's "Bar 61" in Podgorica, they worked overtime for months, on Sundays and on state and religious holidays, without proper calculation and payment. After first trying to resolve the problem internally within the company, and then through legally prescribed procedures, first a request for a peaceful resolution of the dispute, and then a lawsuit for compensation for material damage, they claim that the employer retaliated, primarily through offers to conclude an annex to the employment contract.
"As soon as we initiated proceedings, everyone around us in the hospitality industry started to be regularly calculated and paid compensation for overtime, work on Sundays and holidays, everyone except us. This only shows that everything we asked for was justified. But instead of correcting the mistake, they decided to punish us - they reduced our number of shifts to the minimum wage and sent us to work in another municipality, Danilovgrad, more than 20 kilometers from home," Milić and Zorić state.
They say they have suffered numerous forms of pressure.
"Our salary was lowered to 600 euros, we were transferred to another city, and new workers were hired to the same job in Podgorica instead of us. A month and a half before the transfer, they started assigning us to work 'on the side', so that we would earn as little as possible. We received no explanation, they just came with an annex to the contract and said that it was the company's decision, and that is probably true because we sued them," Milić and Zorić stated.
They believe that the employer's behavior was intended to intimidate them and discourage everyone else.
"What they did to us was done to send a message to all other employees, that no one should ever demand their rights again, because they will know what awaits them if they do. This is not just pressure, it is an example that should silence all employees," they say.
They also add that there is a third colleague who, as they claim, was forced to resign due to intense pressure, because he supports his family.
"He was transferred from a waiter's position in retail to a 'take & go' facility just to make him leave on his own. And they succeeded. And that's only because we demanded what is rightfully ours. And we especially know that it is ours because now other employees in the same position are receiving increased wages, or rather, they have started paying overtime and other forms of wage increases in the correct manner," said Milić and Zorić.
The law stipulates that the employer may, under certain conditions, offer to amend the employment contract, such as if the employee refuses it, the signatory may be dismissed with the right to protect himself in court.
Milić and Zorić say that the legal requirements for their reassignment to another city were not met, and the proof that there was no need for this is that three new waiters were hired to take their jobs in Podgorica, and another colleague who has since dropped the lawsuit. They claim that they were subjected to mobbing and that they were discriminated against because they demanded their rights.
"This clearly proves that there were no 'needs of the work process', but that the goal was to distance us, to punish us and to intimidate others. It is absurd that someone who only asks for what the law guarantees him, should be punished because he believed in that law. We are, above all, family people, who support their families. We worked honestly, we did not ask for anything more than what belongs to every worker," Milić and Zorić stated.
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