At a public hearing finalized last week, both sides remained firmly in their positions, and union leaders announced they would seek a referendum on this law or otherwise organize a general strike. Several branch unions have already announced that they are organizing a general strike if the government sends the verdict to the Assembly without accepting their proposals. The drafting team has already rejected all trade union proposals.
If government representatives reject the main demands of trade unions today, the coordination committees from both trade union centers will immediately consider the decision on their further moves. Possible decisions are to go into collecting signatures so that they can submit an initiative to the Assembly for publishing the referendum to this law. For this, signatures are required for 10 percent of the total number of voters, which is about 54 thousand signatures. The second possibility is to go immediately with the scheduling of the protest and the general strike.
In favor of entering the general strike if the government rejects the trade unions’ suggestions is the Public Administration and Judiciary Union and the professional firefighters' union as well as the representatives of the health, education, energy, railways, taxi companies, telecommunications, Port Bar, Mine coal Boksiti, KAP, and others.
The government believes that tighter retirement conditions are needed to maintain the pension fund and the stability of government finances, suggesting that both conditions for full retirement should meet both conditions - 40 years of service and 65 years of age. If one does not meet these two conditions, the employee may go to a retirement pension at the age of 67 with at least 15 years of service, and earlier only if he meets the more stringent conditions for a disability pension. Also, the benefits of the over-time labor have significantly been reduced to employees and the labor for which there is no insurance is being abolished (traineeships on Labor bureau office, better conditions for the disabled), and the conditions for being entitled to family retirement are also tighter. The "Reform" of the pension law was sought by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Unions have offered four conditions which, as announced, will not give up, namely, that the retirement conditions are 40 years or 65 years of age, to use the 20 best years of benefits per insured person, not all 40 years, as well as to raise the lowest pensions to 80 percent of the minimum earnings, or to 55 percent of the average earnings when it comes to old age pension earned on the basis of 40 years of service.
At the public hearing, the Union recalled that before the transition, when there were three times more employees than retirees in Montenegro, the old-age pension went to 40 years or 55 years of age and the pension coefficient was calculated for the best 10 years of retirement. Then the average pension was 85 percent of the average salary, and now, after several law changes, it has fallen to 55 percent. They consider that about a quarter of current employees would not be expected to retire under new conditions, but will treat the government with their payments.
The minimum old-age pension is now 125 euros, and according to the union's suggestion, to the current minimum wage of 193 euros, the minimum pension would be 154 euros. If the minimum earnings were raised to the expected 250 euros, the minimum pension would be 200 euros. The minimum pension for 40 years of service now amounts to about 150 euros, while according to this proposal it has been increased to about 280 euros. The representative of the Union of Pensions Associations, Miodrag Radulović, voted as a member of the working group against these union proposals.
The pensioners from Bijelo polje with minimal income sent a petition with about a thousand signatures to the President Milo Djukanovic, Prime Minister Duško Marković and President of the Municipality Petar Smolovic, seeking to increase the minimum pensions from 125 to 200 euros. Pensioner Representative Marko Hajduković said that the retirees hope the authorities will understand the misery of living with the lowest-income, although most of them maintain entire families.
"We hope they will understand our problems because we are one of the most vulnerable categories in the society and realize that we cannot survive with 125 euros. We want the authorities to understand the difficult material position we are in and to have an understanding so they will not take any other measures," Hajdukovic said. The pensioners point out that they are indignant as the representative of Pension Union Miodrag Radulovic voted as a member of the working group against the union's proposal to raise minimum pensions. They say that the minimum of 125 euros receives around 1,200 pensioners from Bijelo Polje.
Text by Jadranka Cetkovic, Marija Mirjacic, Goran Kapor, on September 18th, 2018, read more at Vijesti
