The Union of Trade and Service Activities of Bosnia and Herzegovina (STBiH) marked May Day in a slightly different way. In an Open Study in Sarajevo, they presented the problems of workers in this sector, those who mostly worked yesterday.
Mersiha Ferhatovic-Besirovic, the president of this union, spoke about their position, but also about the union’s activities for its improvement.
According to her, the union decided for the Open Studio because the protest is not just a walk and expressing demands in front of the building, which was empty yesterday and it will stay like that for the next few days. Protest, she says, is any public, courageous, and loud statement of what you do not agree with, as well as clearly articulated demands.
“What is specific about what we have done today is that we have put only our interests in the background again and talked about what other unions have not put in the foreground, and that is the drastic increase in food and energy prices, which annuls all rights from collective agreements and laws, ” Ferhatovic-Besirovic pointed out yesterday.
In general, incomes are the priority for workers in BiH. In the recent period, a collective agreement was signed, where the minimum wage was increased, but drastic price increases “ate” the increase. We must have a minimum wage that will monitor the cost of living, which is increasing each day, ” mentionedFerhatovic-Besirovic.
“There are two tools at our disposal: a revolution – which will not happen as long as we have such fragmented unions. The second mechanism is elections, and that was, among other things, our second request. We demand the right for workers to go to elections and choose those who will offer them economic program. “
But, Ferhatovic-Besirovic stressed that, due to fragmentation, the government does not take the union’s struggle for workers’ rights seriously. The trade union movement failed at the most important task: to make the working class massive and, by acting together, to force the government to finally do something.
