- Македонски
- English
The main reason for the shortage of labour in the country is the low wages and abuses committed by the bosses over the last 34 years, says Slobodan Trendafilov, president of the Confederation of Trade Unions of Macedonia (CSM). According to him, low wages are the main reason why workers are leaving Macedonia
"The fact that today, due to low wages, workers are leaving to work in other countries, to build other economies, I think should be the biggest defeat for these bosses who abused the labour force. As a reminder, as much as we are productive, we have created enormous capital for them, enormous wealth. They stole companies in the past and kept them for themselves, and that is precisely the reason why we are talking about the shortage of labour again 34 years after Macedonia's independence. If you pay them miserably, then they only have money for a one-way ticket, and that is outside of Macedonia," says Trendafilov.
For him, the previous government's attempt to import workers, whose bosses will pay them less than domestic workers, is very worrying.
"Macedonia has become a tourist agency that brought workers from Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and then from here they left for some of the countries in the European Union, where, of course, they earn better than in Macedonia," Trendafilov said.
The president of the SSM, Slobodan Trendafilov, said that at the large workers' protest on May 1, they demanded a minimum wage, and at that time, as a union, they considered 450 euros necessary because the minimum wages in the neighbourhood were within those limits.
According to him, a greater step is needed for wage growth, although, as he says, there are positive signals from the Government, and as an example he cites the increase in the salaries of healthcare workers and to some extent with salaries in education, with which the Government has corrected a great injustice towards these workers who, due to the elections, did not receive any adjustment in their salaries this year.
"Today, in Macedonia, according to the latest data, 25,000 workers receive a salary equal to the minimum wage, and 10,000 workers receive a salary from 1 denar to 22,567 denars. What is shocking is that all these workers receive a salary in an envelope for which the employers do not pay contributions from the mandatory social insurance and it costs the state 250 million euros annually in terms of unpaid contributions to the Fund. We are awaiting the latest data from the Public Revenue Office on how many workers in the country receive a minimum wage from 22,567 denars to 27,000 denars, or the five thousand denars increase in the minimum wage that the SSM demanded. "We want to show the state that in the public sector, a very small number of workers receive the minimum wage and for a very small number of workers, the budget will be burdened. And no one should feel sorry for the bosses in the private sector, least of all us, the Trade Union," Trendafilov says.
