Negotiations about minimum wage to start soon – Unions requesting increase by RSD 5,000

The unions will request for the minimum monthly wage to be increased by RSD 5,000 and expect the state to agree to an increase by RSD 2,500 in the negotiations which are to start in 10 days, Blic reports. Employers, however, are offering less.

The minimum wage is currently RSD 24,882 and is paid to 350,000 workers in Serbia.

– We will start out in a pretty radical fashion. We will ask for the minimum wage to be increased from RSD 143 per hour to RSD 170. This means that the minimum wage would increase from RSD 24,822 to RSD 29,580 – claims an unnamed Blic source.

The same source says that, using their past experience, the unions count on having the Government agree to an increase by around 10%, which would be around RSD 2,500 more than the current minimum wage in the country.

– Workers would, then, get RSD 157 per hour, or a guaranteed wage of around RSD 27,300 – the Blic source says.

The source reveals that the negotiations between the state, the unions and employers are expected to start in mid-August, whereas the final decision on the minimum wage is expected to be made in mid-October and come into effect on January 1, 2019.

On the other hand, Nebojsa Atanackovic, the president of the Serbian Association of Employers and one of the members of the negotiation team, told the Belgrade newspaper that employers had been trying for years to apply the only possible economic approach to the said issue.

– All wage raises should be equal to the annual increase of the GDP and the inflation. This year, that amounts to 6% and the unions’ request to have the minimum wage raised by 10% is not realistic – he explains.

Atanackovic says that employers will ask for the minimum wage to be around RSD 152 per hour, or RSD 26,300 in total, which is RSD 700 less than the minimum request by the unions.

Unija poslodavaca Srbije Beograd

Serbian Association of Employers

Serbian unions

unions in Serbia

minimum wage

minimum wage in Serbia

minimum monthly wage

minimum monthly wage in Serbia