Media Union: RTCG management has not yet learned that a collective agreement must be the result of careful negotiations

The Media Union of Montenegro has strongly condemned the anti-union discrimination, pressure and insinuations to which, as they claim, the management of the public media service has subjected colleagues from the Union of Employees of Radio and Television of Montenegro (RTCG) simply because of their fight for a collective agreement and fair wages.

They said they are providing support to RTCG employees at a time when their employer is threatening to establish a new yellow union in response to the resistance it is receiving from the only representative union that has not agreed to sign the collective agreement proposed by management.

"A collective agreement must be the result of social dialogue and careful negotiations, not a unilateral decision by management, and this is one of the basic principles that the RTCG management has clearly not yet learned," the Media Union said in a statement.

It is added that the pressure on individual union members to resign and the blackmail they suffer because of their union membership and the fight for their legally protected rights is something that is unacceptable and must not be ignored.

"The purpose of RTCG's existence is the production of media content and despite that, according to the collective agreement proposal that the management presented to the Council as a negotiated matter, the first journalist who produces a program is in an incredible 130th place in the coefficient table. Needless to say, all directors, necessary and newly invented, their assistants, advisors... are at the top of the table and that they have been proposed salary increases of several coefficient points each, and 'ordinary' university graduates who produce programs by about 0,5.

When the manipulative behavior of the management did not pass, then, two days after submitting the text that should be the starting point for the drafting of a new collective agreement and the Union's request for negotiations to begin, they announced that a new, and in fact phantom, union had been formed and even became representative, which would protect employees. The public was deprived of basic information, although the RTCG portal was misused for this purpose, where the unsigned text said 'everything', except when, who, where and why the union was founded," the statement said.

Unfortunately, the Media Union says, it is now clear that the current management has learned nothing from its own mistake, which led to the first strike of RTCG employees in its history in 2023. They recall that this strike was also preceded by pressure and threats directed at the membership, but that everything ended in favor of the employees.

"We remind you that Radio and Television of Montenegro is a public service owned by the state of Montenegro and all its citizens, that it is a budgetary unit that will be financed with 20 million euros of public money this year, and therefore it should be an institution that is an example of freedom of the media and labor rights enjoyed by employees, in which respect for the law should be taken for granted. We emphasize that the Constitution of Montenegro and the Labor Law guarantee freedom of trade union organization and action and prohibit any discrimination on this basis, while the Criminal Code prescribes imprisonment for preventing or obstructing trade union organization and action. Therefore, we are not helpless. On the contrary," the statement concludes.