Given that numerous labor rights were organized and established in Yugoslavia, those who did not live and work at that time, on the eve of May Day, must wonder what it was like to be a worker in the former state and whether they had greater rights. Those who remember those years say that it was better, but is it possible to determine that for sure.
Representatives of labor and socialist parties from twenty European countries founded the Second International in Paris in 1889, the goal of which was the fight for workers’ rights, and the initiative arose after the bloody protests of workers in 1886, who fought for an eight-hour working day.
In the following decades, they fought for it, and positive changes did not bypass Yugoslavia, where many workers’ rights were regulated for the first time in those years.
Today there is no worker solidarity as it used to be if we take into account that workers used to voluntarily pay money into the so-called mutual aid fund.
And while Yugonostalgics claim that at the end of the 80s, when Tito’s Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) still existed, they had earnings worth 1,000 or more German marks at the time, there are others who say that these earnings were in reality much more lower, that is, they were approximately like today’s.
Since the currency at that time was the dinar, and its exchange rate was constantly fluctuating, statistics certainly could not give a precise answer to the question of what level the wages of workers in the old Yugoslavia were compared to today, but the general feeling is that it was better.
The general lack of money that we are experiencing today, the anxiety of workers because they do not know whether they will be paid on time next month and whether they will get an extension of their fixed-term employment contract, is an established matrix by which the majority of the working class in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) lives. Judging by the stories, this is the opposite picture from the one that was present during the former Yugoslavia, when the worker deserved at least greater respect.
In addition, the modern era brings us another challenge, which is the transition to working from home, which has increased the number of working hours for many workers that are not recorded as overtime and are exposed to enormous pressure from employers to be available 24 hours a day, Klix.ba reports.
