Trade Unions to Request New Minimum Wage Increase

When the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia announces the prices and the value of the minimal consumer basket for January, the Confederation of Autonomous Trade Unions of Serbia (SSSS) will request a discussion about a new minimum wage increase for this year at the Social-Economic Council (SES).

The minimal basket in December, they claim, cost over RSD 50,000 and already then exceeded the minimum wage of RSD 40,000. The trade unions believed that the employer has to pay the worker if they want to keep them and prevent them from going to work abroad.

SSSS says that, if the inflation is stopped, the prices will not go back to what they were and the consumer basket will continue diverging from the minimum wage, which is paid to a lot of people in utility services, the legal system, education, culture. Employers not just in the public sector, but also in the private one, have to increase the minimum wage, as reported on the Novosti website.

In the past 10 years, the state’s estimates are that around 350,000 people in Serbia work for the minimum wage, but it has been estimated that the number has to be higher, and the number of 400,000 is mentioned the most frequently. In September last year, having failed to achieve consensus on the amount of the minimum wage with the trade unions and the employers, the Government of Serbia alone set the minimum wage at RSD 40,020.