The Federation of Trade Unions of Republika Srpska will initiate a panel discussion with social partners regarding work on Sundays because they believe that work on weekends cannot be treated like other days of the week.
– Therefore, the Union wants us to analyze work on Sundays with the social partners. We believe that employers must pay workers differently if they hire them on weekends. It is not the same to work on Tuesdays and Wednesdays as on Sundays – said the president of the Union of Trade Unions of the RS, Goran Stanković, after a meeting with the Minister of Labor of the RS, Danijelo Egić.
The law in the RS allowed each local community to set working hours on Sundays. Thus, in Banja Luka, it is allowed to work on Sundays until 10 p.m., in Prijedor until 1 p.m., while the city of Bijeljina has banned work on Sundays, as some other municipalities in the RS have done. Apart from the on-call services, which by law must work 24 hours a day, shops are mostly open on Sundays.
In the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, working on Sundays has recently been banned, while in Croatia the number of working Sundays per year has been determined.
RS Minister of Labor Danijel Egić stated that the Ministry had not considered a legal change regarding working on Sundays, and stated that the market in the RS differs from the FBiH and neighboring countries.
Stanković, who was recently elected president of the Federation of Trade Unions of the RS instead of Ranka Mišić, today officially met with the Minister of Labor of the RS for the first time.
The two announced that the goal is to unfreeze the work of the Economic and Social Council of the RS, which also includes employers, in order to improve the position of workers.
Stanković stated that two-thirds of workers in the RS still cannot reach the level of the average salary.
