Trade union representatives from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia agree that together they can achieve more, considering that workers face the same or similar problems, it was pointed out today in Sarajevo at the second conference of trade unions of Southeast Europe.
The focus of the conference, according to the president of the Union of trade and service workers of BiH, Mersiha Beširović, is the formalization of what was agreed at the previous meeting, and it refers to the official formation of two important committees.
“The first is a joint committee for organizing trade unions of Southeast Europe, and the second is a regional committee of trade union commissioners for the Fortenova group. These are the companies Konzum and Mercator, which in Bosnia and Herzegovina are part of the Fortenova group. In other countries in the region, for example in Croatia and Montenegro, these are other companies. Our common goal is to raise union engagement to a higher, regional level,” said Beširović.
Today, she added, they made a decision to jointly organize workers in multinational companies operating in the region, and defined which companies these are. When it comes to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Beširović stated that the priority is the company Lidl, which has been talked about a lot lately, considering that the company is expected to open, that is, start operations.
“The main goal is to jointly respond to all the challenges faced by workers in this sector. During these two days, we will also talk about some other issues, such as the ban on working on Sundays. We know that this is already in force in Croatia and Montenegro, and in North Macedonia, as we heard, almost 90 percent of shops are closed on Sundays. Therefore, this is what we want in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” pointed out Beširović.
She added that trade union representatives will also discuss a number of other common problems, such as low wages in the trade sector compared to other sectors, overtime and all the problems faced by the workers they represent.
The conference was organized as part of the project “Together for the rights of workers in trade”, which is supported, among others, by the Swedish trade union, Fena reports.
