The brown coal mine Zenica is officially going to systematize jobs. Out of 800 workers, 164 of them were declared redundant. It was decided at the meeting of the Board of Directors of Elekroprivreda BiH. Will this solve the accumulated problems of the Zenica mine?
Elvedin Avdić, president of the Union of RMU Zenica “It is better to take care of 150 workers adequately than to have 800, here are 796 of us, than if we all fell and were nowhere to be found”
With these words, both the union and the workers of the Zenica Brown Coal Mine welcome systematization in this mine. With the production suspended and waiting for the payment of two back wages, they see the reduction of the number of workers as the only solution.
“Perhaps we could have asked for the coat to be fired, or not, we wanted to stand behind those 154 people as a union, so that they leave with a fixed career path and with adequate severance pay,” Avdic says.
This is just the first phase. With the new Ordinance on organization, and the amendment to the Ordinance on the systematization of workplaces of RMU Zenica, two more will follow in the next year. The number of workers will continue to decrease, and eventually the official closure of the Stara Jam plant is planned.
“Given that even according to the new systematization of 641 workers, we have 19 vacancies at the position of NK raqdnik in the pit, so this whole story is mainly about the employees who are outside and who, due to the closure of that facility, have now remained unassigned according to the systematization,” said Mensur Hukić, director of RMU Zenica.
They point out that this opens the way to more productive production in the only remaining Raspotočje facility, on which the payment of wages to workers ultimately depends. Now the work norm of 20 thousand tons per month is achievable. Nevertheless, union representatives are aware that a similar scenario awaits the other mines of the Federation, and in addition to optimism, they also share justified apprehension.
“We should not run away from the truth. This is one stage in the closing of the mine in the end, and now whether it will be in the next three or six, the results of the work will show us the new regulations on organization and systematization,” Husic adds.
Along with these processes, the activities of paying salaries to the miners of Zenica are also moving forward, because this is the first and main prerequisite for coal mining to begin again in this mine, BHRT reports.
