Staff at the broadcaster in Serbia’s northern province held a brief warning strike in front of the building of the media house, demanding higher wages.
Staff of the public service Radio-television of Vojvodina, RTV, held an hour-long warning strike on Thursday and protest in front of the media building in Novi Sad, northern Serbia.
They demand higher salaries and the adoption of a new systematization of jobs, Darko Sper, president of the branch union of Culture, Art and Media Nezavisnost, told BIRN. All three media unions participated in the strike, Nezavisnost, Samostalni and the Vocational Union, said Sper.
He added that RTV salaries have not increased in the last three years, although this was also the case in the rest of the public sector in Serbia.
“Even though we belong to the public sector, we didn’t get a 10-per-cent increase in January,” Sper told BIRN, and added that this was the reason to refer the collective agreement in January, which stipulates that when inflation is higher than 5 per cent, there are conditions for negotiations on a pay increase.
RTV responded that there was not enough money for salary increases and they should “wait until June when there could be an increase in television subscriptions”, Sper said.
RTV, which employs 1,200 workers, is financed from a television subscription of 299 dinars (2.5 euros) per household, which citizens pay with their monthly electricity bill. It gets a subsidy of 900 million dinars (around 7.7 million euros) per year from the state budget.
Of the total funds paid by citizens of Vojvodina for television subscriptions, 70 per cent goes to RTV and 30 per cent to Serbia’s National Broadcaster, RTS. Payments by citizens ln other parts of Serbia go entirely to RTS.
RTV and RTS were part of the same company until two decades ago, when they were separated into two media services. Since then, Sper explained, there have been significant differences in wages.
“Our average gross salary is 80,000 dinars [around 680 euros], and in RTS it is 120,000 dinars [around 1,020 euros], so the difference is 50 per cent.” he said.
The second request refers to a change in the systematization of workplaces, which the State Audit Institution two years ago said should be changed. “The current act is outdated and quite discriminatory in relation to some people who perform the same tasks and have different salaries,” Sper said.
The unions contacted the Agency for Peaceful Settlement of Labour Disputes, which said it would launch an urgent procedure and start negotiations on the strike demands. “So we expect next week to sit down and negotiate,” Sper said, adding that if that doesn’t happen, they will again stage a one-hour warning strike.
He added that they have sent various requests to the Ministry of Information, but have never received answers.
General Director of RTV Goran Karadzic, at a meeting with union leaders in February, announced that the TV subscription will soon rise from 299 dinars, most likely to 340 dinars, which will also contribute to an increase of employees’ earnings, as portal 021 reported.
Karadzic said then that Minister of Finance Sinisa Mali had told him of the possibility of an additional increase in the subscription at the end of the year.
“As part of the creation of a new organization and systematization, some units will be abolished … with the fact that employees from those parts will be redeployed,” Karadzic said.
