RTCG Employees' Union: We are conditioned to sign a document that humiliates the media profession

Our opposition (supported by clear arguments) to certain provisions of the offered collective agreement, as well as to the proposed controversial salary increase that would only apply to a portion of the workers, which the management wants to forcefully adopt, was met with a "knife-like" response, the Radio Television of Montenegro (RTCG) Employees' Union announced today.

"Our society is a democracy in its infancy and it is not uncommon for union activity to cause resistance in many companies. It is our obligation, as the Union of Public Service Employees, which reports on such topics, to point out similar problems in our own country," the statement said.

They added that they are facing serious pressure on their union activities at the Public Service.

"For the second time in the last two years, we have encountered great misunderstanding on the part of management. Namely, our opposition (supported by clear arguments) to certain provisions of the offered collective agreement, as well as the proposed controversial salary increase that would only apply to a portion of the workers, which the management wants to forcefully adopt, was met with hostility," reads a statement from the RTCG Employees' Union.

According to them, as media professionals who responsibly report on anti-union discrimination and other deviations and warn about these and similar problems, they do not agree to pressure, intimidation, or injustice, especially because, as they said, union activity is their legally protected right.

"We are conditioned to sign a document that humiliates the media profession. The Ministry of Finance returned such a poor collective agreement proposal to RTCG two months ago as unacceptable, and now the management expects the Union to accept, without further negotiations, the 'second hand' of drawing coefficients. The management not only does not recognize that we have a serious problem, but it is also putting pressure on individual members of the Union who dared to point out anomalies and who, in broad consultations with the union membership, based on appropriate principles, defined a quality collective agreement proposal. Managers must be aware that anti-union discrimination is also subject to laws," the statement of the RTCG Employees' Union emphasizes.

The union said that they had not received information from management that the collective agreement proposal from the Ministry of Finance had been returned as unacceptable.

"That proposal was certainly not signed by the leadership of our Union. If it had been, we would not be able to lead this union struggle now. From the moment we learned through our research that the KU had been returned, the Union began drafting a document defining the minimum acceptable for employees. All the time, one gets the impression that management somehow "under the radar" (it sends the unsigned document to the RTCG Council and the Government of Montenegro for adoption) wants to push through a document by which more than half of the workers will not receive a raise, and those who do will continue to view the average Montenegrin salary as an unattainable ideal. The only ones who benefit from their humiliating proposal are numerous assistants, advisors, managers and the sprawling administration in which employees, from bosses to workers, have significantly higher salaries than the professionals who produce the program every day," the statement reads.

According to the RTCG Employees' Union, instead of negotiations, they received intimidation of individual union members by abolishing variables, blocking official trips even though they were foreseen in the program and financial plan, pressure on their membership to leave the Union, stories about overly strict managers of the Ministry of Finance who barely agreed to accept such a collective agreement, which, as they emphasized, the Union did not sign.

"We invited management representatives to sit down at the table and agree on a collective bargaining agreement that will be a significant step forward in terms of raises, but also an important step towards a fairer distribution of funds within the professions of the Public Media Service. It does not have to take months to reach an agreement. It is up to the management whether we will get out of this situation to the satisfaction of the workers or whether we will get into unnecessary complications as was the case two years ago," the RTCG Employees' Union concluded in a statement.