The possibility of introducing a non-working weekend at the level of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is being considered, said the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina trade minister Amir Hasičević in an interview with Fena news agency, noting that he does not think it is good to solve these issues partially by municipalities and cities, which is currently happening.
“In our daily conversation with union representatives, but also with representatives of employers from the field of trade, we receive information that these partial solutions are not good and that we should work in that direction to unify the market space of the Federation so that the non-working Sunday issue is resolved equally at the level of the Federation,” assessed Minister Hasičević.
Sunday is a day for the family
Regarding the benefits and the consequences of the non-working Sunday, the Federal Minister of Trade states that there are discussions about this and that there are both good and possible bad sides of this solution.
“First of all, we spoke with the Trade Union, the Employers’ Association, representatives of trading companies, and we spoke with consumer associations in order to get information about what are the advantages and what are the disadvantages. The advantages mentioned by the Trade Union, and which I also agree with and I think everyone will agree with, is that Sunday must become that family day, first of all if we take into account the fact that the data of the Bureau of Statistics as of 31. December they say that 149 thousand workers are employed in trade at the level of BiH, and about 99 thousand in the Federation, and that 72 percent of them are women. Then the question arises as to what is gained by the fact that women employed in the trade get a non-working day that is not Sunday, if they cannot be with their family,” said Minister Hasičević.
According to him, the other side that speaks in a positive sense of the need to make such a decision is the information they received from the field in the conversation with employers. As the minister said, such a solution would suit them due to the lack of manpower and due to their respect for the needs of their workers, because it was shown that in cities where the non-working week has already been introduced, it did not directly affect the drop in traffic or anything similar.
“What is stated as negative and what we could see in some public statements, I think it boils down to a political issue, and here we should not ‘politicize’ so to speak, because it is said that, if there is a possibility that it will not be on the territory of BiH, that there will be an overflow of traffic from the Federation to the Republika Srpska and the like. However, the latest case is Goražde, which from July 7 seems to me to have introduced a non-working Sunday (…) An increasing number of cities are moving in that direction, even when we talk about the Republic of Srpska, we have Bijeljina, Doboj and more and more of them, participating in the non-working Sunday Sunday at the level of Republika Srpska, in the entire territory, is declared non-working – pointed out Minister Hasičević, stating that there is also great pressure from the trade unions.
He said that the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is working on the necessary legal solutions.
Introduce all non-working Sundays
The new Draft Law on Internal Trade, as stated by Minister Hasičević, also covers these issues, listening to echoes from the field as well as the experiences of others, such as neighboring Croatia.
“So, following the model and the practice and regulations of the Republic of Croatia, we edited that article with the fact that we are currently going in that direction that all non-working Sundays will be non-working, so there will be no exceptions. For example, in Croatia, due to the need for the tourist season, 16 weeks are left to be chosen, that is, business entities determine which 16 weeks they will work. In the discussions on the ground, however, we came to the conclusion that these will be completely non-working Sundays and that they will apply to the territory of the entire Federation,” said the Federal Minister of Trade.
He underlined that there are exceptions for certain shops such as souvenir shops, bakeries, gas stations, on-call pharmacies and the like, which will be exempt from this type of decision, as well as what the Federal Headquarters of Civil Protection will determine in case of some natural or other disaster.
