At first glance, Serbia seems like a great place for trade unions. Under the country’s labour law, a union need only sign up 15% of the workforce in order to compell employers to bargain collectively. But the problem is that some unions open negotiations from a position of real weakness in the workplace, and wind up with poor contracts.
Similarly, the law in Serbia guarantees workers the right to things like sick leave (including leave to care for children who fall ill).
But there’s a loophole in the law that has been exploited by a South Korean-owned firm, Yura, whose customers include car manufacturers such as Kia, Hyundai, Jaguar, Porsche, Audi, and Mercedes. That loophole means that many workers are paid the minimum wage. Workers who report to work every single day, without exception, who work when they are ill, or when asked to come in on weekends, get “bonuses” which raise their wages considerably. Workers who miss a day are penalised for at least six months, or up to a year. As a result, workers know they have to report to work even when ill, injured or have kids in hospital. This is the situation for Yura’s more than 7,000 workers across Serbia.
The union says that Serbian law considers the minimum wage as a temporary measure for companies to overcome difficulties, for up to six months. But Yura has kept all of its shopfloor workforce on minimum wage since its establishment in Serbia over 13 years ago.
And it gets worse. When workers complained about price increases in the company’s cafeterias, the company agreed to roll back the prices. But they drastically cut down on portion sizes at the same time. They also allowed the company’s sanitary facilities to deteriorate. Working for Yura has turned into a nightmare for thousands of workers.
By early June this year, the workers had had enough. The Autonomous Metalworkers Trade Union of Serbia led a series of warning strikes in their fight for better wages and dignified working conditions. These were the specific demands of the strikers:
1 A 20% pay raise from the current Serbian minimum wage.
2 The cessation of the punitive attendance bonus policy.
3 An increase in meal allowance from 250 RSD to 400 RSD.
4 An additional 5 million RSD per month to improve conditions in the company’s sanitary facilities.
Those strikes prompted the company to begin a union-busting campaign while at the same refusing to negotiate with the union — in violation of the labour law.
During the strike, all workers faced constant intimidation and threats by the managers and team leaders. Yura is putting more and more pressure on workers to leave the union, by ostracising the workers who went on strike and dismissing a handful of workers on trumped-up charges, to serve as scapegoats.
The union has lodged a formal complaint with the German Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (BAFA), which is responsible for the German supply chain due diligence law.
The union is also requesting international solidarity to pressure Yura to end union-busting activities and to responsibly conclude the negotiations moderated by the Serbian labour ministry. IndustriALL Global Union and IndustriAll Europe have been supporting the union and strikers in their struggle. Together with the union, they have launched a campaign on LabourStart to demand that the company respect workers’ rights — and obey the law.
You can show your support for those workers by going to https://bit.ly/yura-strike
This article appears in this week’s Solidarity.