The company Aerodromi Crne Gore (ACG) has been sued by two female doctors who were employed at Tivat Airport for years, first under supplementary work contracts and later under permanent employment contracts. They claim that ACG allegedly caused them great damage by not paying them overtime compensation, which is why they have filed high compensation claims.
According to the estimates of experts hired by the court, the amounts of individual damages allegedly suffered by the doctors range up to 130.000 euros, and their claims for compensation are not based on specific ACG business documentation (work attendance records) that should confirm or deny the doctors' allegations, but rather on their claims as injured parties and the claims of one or two witnesses that they cited in their lawsuits.
In the lawsuit, which "Vijesti" had access to, the BRT doctor, who, according to the expert's findings, is claiming up to 130.000 euros, claims that in the period from 2008 to the end of 2018, she worked at Tivat Airport by coming to work two hours before the first flight every other day, and staying half an hour after sunset when Tivat Airport sends off the last flights because there are no conditions for working at night and in conditions of reduced visibility. Until 2016, BRT was engaged at Tivat Airport under a contract for additional work for four hours a day, because during that period she was permanently employed at the Health Center in Kotor as a doctor in the Emergency Department, and in 2018 she established a permanent employment relationship with ACG.
BRT claims that, despite having a contract for additional work with ACG for four hours a day, she was allegedly “in a kind of slave relationship” between 2008 and 2016, as she allegedly worked 16 to 18 hours a day. Despite this, in 2018 she established a permanent employment relationship with the company, which she now claims in court had previously exploited her.
When asked about this case, ACG management told "Vijesti" that it is indisputable that during the time she had a four-hour additional work contract with ACG, Dr. BRT was permanently employed at the Health Center, and she worked as a doctor in the Emergency Department.
“According to her own statement, she worked in the Emergency Department one day on the day shift (from 7 am to 19 pm), the other day on the night shift (19 pm to 7 am), and had two days off. She worked at Tivat Airport every other day (as she says, the whole day). One of those two days absolutely had to, because it was not possible otherwise, be “overlapped” in time with one of her shifts in the Emergency Department, day or night. Given that, according to the expert's calculations, she worked at the airport in the summer from 5 am (once, as she said in court, also from 3:30 am) to 20:30 or 20:45 pm, this means that when Dr. BRT was on the night shift in the Emergency Department in Kotor from 19 pm to 7 am, she would be approximately 1-2 hours late for her regular job every time. If she worked at the Airport after the night shift in the Emergency Department, she would each time be on duty at "She left for Kotor at least two hours earlier. And so continuously for eight years? Given that the fact of her permanent employment and the way she presented the additional work are mutually exclusive, the untruthfulness of her statement is both obvious and irrefutable," said the ACG management.
The problem for the ACG management, however, is the almost unbelievable fact that since they took over the airports in Tivat and Podgorica from JAT in 2003, the Airports did not introduce electronic check-in of employees when arriving and departing from work for the next ten years, so now these and numerous similar claims for damages by former or current employees of the state airport company are reduced only to the claims of the plaintiffs and cite one or two more witnesses that it was indeed the case that the employee who allegedly did not get paid for overtime worked.
"It is absolutely untrue that anyone was exploited in this way, as is sometimes attempted to be portrayed in court, because great care was taken to ensure that, given the specifics of airport work, seasonal workloads, and the like, any overtime worked by all employees was recorded and compensated either through monetary compensation or, possibly, through additional hours or days off. Therefore, no one was knowingly harmed, and at the very least, it is unfair and disloyal for those people who are filing such lawsuits to treat the company in which they used to earn or still earn their living in this way," one of the union activists at ACG, who did not want his name to be mentioned in the media due to the need to preserve collegial relations in that company, told "Vijesti".
A similar lawsuit against ACG was filed by another doctor who was once employed at Tivat Airport, Dr. LKZ, who also had contracts with ACG for additional work for four hours effectively, and who was also permanently employed at the Kotor Health Center. Dr. LKZ also gave a statement to the court with her witnesses, stating that she also allegedly worked 2008-2018 hours a day at Tivat Airport from 16 to 17, having to be there two hours before the first plane landed and staying one hour after the last plane took off.
ACG, however, claims that the additional work contracts that this doctor had with them for the period from 2003 to 2008 clearly stated that she was required to be present at the airport an hour before the first plane landed and half an hour after the last takeoff, but not to be present constantly during that interval.
At the time the two doctors are suing ACG for allegedly unpaid overtime, a doctor who was permanently employed by ACG was also working at the airport alongside them. The management of the state-owned airport company emphasizes that it is "more than clear" that the claims of the two doctors and their witnesses about their alleged exploitation at the Tivat Airport, where they allegedly spent 17 hours at work every other day, are neither true nor do they logically coincide with the regular work duties of the two doctors at the Kotor Emergency Department. Therefore, the ACG is also considering filing criminal charges against two doctors "for giving false statements", where the doctors would have the opportunity to explain in detail to the prosecution, with verification through other evidence of the criminal proceedings, how they did these two jobs in the way they told the court, and whether they were constantly late or left their duty hours at the Kotor Ambulance for years and who allowed them to do so, and who allegedly ordered them to work unpaid 16-17 hours at Tivat Airport.
ACG emphasized that they are considering criminal charges for giving false testimony because the example of the two doctors is just one "of many similar cases with overtime work as the subject of the dispute". In them, they point out, the court "without exception accepts the claims and where the only evidence is the statements of the plaintiff himself and his witnesses, which are agreed upon and often false", abusing the fact that ACG had not introduced an efficient system of reporting and recording the presence of its employees even fifteen years after they took over the airports from JAT.
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