When a Social Dialogue turns into Government's Monologue

The Social Dialogue in the Serbian Ministry of Interior (MoI), between an employer and his employees represented by unions, has not existed in the last five years (2013-2017).

Each and every type of argumented communication that unions try to focuse on defining the problems of workers and the profession itself, and improving the position of employees as well as working together to create a mutually satisfactory form of binding regulations that regulate the position of workers, is simply de facto quashed by government.

The MoI, as part of the executive authority, took the position of absolutist authoritarianism from which it is not ready to even engage in a constructive discussion, but only exercises one-way demonstration of power. The expression of the appearance of Social Dialogue with the representatives of syndicates is mostly formalistic, so that after meeting the forms of dialogue, it would be possible for the populist to appear in the public, as well as in the subsoil group of workers of our Ministry. As the MoI has direct participation in the placement of news in certain media, whish without any criticism follow and publish the texts, interviews and announcements of the minister, the state secretaries, thus suffocates any possibility of pointing out numerous problems in the Ministry itself, since the same media simply ignored the responses or actions of representative trade unions towards the employer.

On the 30th of May 2014 the Commission for Cooperation with Trade Union Organizations was formed in the Ministry. The idea was excellent, but realization and implementation equal to zero. In these so called “Social Dialogue Sessions” thousands of problems were raised by all trade unions in the MoI and resolved in promises. Due to the mismanagement of workers by the appearance of social dialogue at the sessions of this Commission, the PUS had decided in September 2016 not to participate any more in the work of this fraudulent Commission.

The Serbian Ministry of Interior represents a false world of statistics, nepotism, dilettantism and the choking of the policing profession. The dialogue was extinguished due to the takeover of the MoI by a political option that abuses all the resources of the ministry for the purposes of its policy and personal gain.

Namely, on 11th February of 2015 the new Specific Collective Agreement for police officers was signed. Now, this information without further analysis would point to the contradiction with our already expressed attitude about the lack of social dialogue. However, this Agreement was signed by only one minister's union, while the other one, Police Union of Serbia (PUS) – the largest and first representative union, refused to sign it. Reasons: the old Specific Collective Agreement had 89 and the new 48 articles, the new one had no chapters that regulate employee protection - job rationalization, safety and health at work, the right to strike, prisons, etc. In order to prevent the abolition of acquired rights, the PUS organized a Petition in February 2015, signed by 21.054 MoI employees. Petition because the MoI did not want to negotiate. Shortly, under the weight of workers' pressure, the MoI signed the Joint Statement with PUS on 17.03.2015, that obliges It to adopt the new Agreement. Again, the MoI misleads it because until the 17th of July it does not form a Working Group for the adoption of the new Agreement, but ignores the signed Joint Statement. On that day the PUS announces a strike because it has no communication with the MoI, and only after that the MoI has signed the Annex (and not the new Specific Collective Agreement). Besides that, the Minister, through the official website of the Government, announces that he signed annex with his union, without mentioning the PUS.

In February of 2016, the new Police Act came into force. When adopting it, formal public hearings were held on which the PUS also took part, but these public debates were without any functional meaning. All the PUS's objections and suggestions came to the silence of the delegated representatives of the employer. Following the announcement of the hunger strike by the PSS over the general ignoring of the MoI and the rest of the Government for the needs of the workers, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia received a delegation of PUS. At the official meeting an agreement has been reached with the prime minister in 6 points, 3 of which the Serbian Government has not yet fulfilled. What has been accepted, factually only cosmetic, are certain amendments to the Law on Police. For 3 uncompleted points of the agreement, PUS has addressed the Ministry 13 times in writing, but the answers were mostly not received or were purely disadvantages. Therefore, from November 2016 to April 2017, PUS has held 5 massive protests on the street, And on one of them that was held on the April 8 of this year, there were more than 80.000 people. The only response from the Government and the Ministry of the Interior through the media was that Board members of PUS are mercenaries of Soros, Rockefeller, than of the European Union and the European Commission, etc.

About this and other issues, PUS has informed, on a number of occasions, the competent national and foreign institutions, the European Police Union as our umbrella union organization, European Commission Expert Missions for negotiating chapters and the implementation of the Police Act, and will continue to do so.