Who wants to quietly, by suspending the collective agreements, to now reduce the salaries that were increased through collective bargaining and conclusion of the same collective agreements?

With the changes made to the legal provisions of the Law on Public Sector Employees and the Law on Administrative Officials, or more precisely the changes made to the provisions in the sections on salaries, the right for having the possibility to regulate and amend all rights related to salaries by conclusion of collective agreements has been limited and suspended. Therefore these changes resulted with shocking suspension of the collective bargaining for employees in the public sector, all of which is contrary to the Constitution, the Law on Labour Relations and international labour standards and conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention for the Protection of Rights.

We want to emphasize that in accordance with Article 32 of the Constitution - the exercise of the rights of employees and their position is regulated by law and collective agreements. Having said all the above the Federation of Trade Unions of Macedonia (SSM), together with the branch trade unions united in SSM coming from the public sector, in the up-coming days will file an Initiative for assessing constitutionality and legality to the Constitutional Court of our country for violation of fundamental values ​​of the constitutional order of the Republic of Macedonia, including, among others, the fundamental freedoms and rights of every man and every citizen recognized in the international law and established by the Constitution, the rule of law, the division of state power into legislative, executive and judicial branches, and violation of humanism, social justice and solidarity.

The right to collective bargaining and the conclusion of collective agreements is a constitutionally guaranteed right and as well right that was provided through the Conventions of the International Labor Organization, so absolutely no one is allowed to take away, prohibit, limit or eliminate this right as such.

Considering that the explained changes to these laws were adopted without any kind of consultations with the trade unions and without the consent of the Economic and Social Council, the first step we will take is to challenge them before the Constitutional Court. At the same time, SSM will officially ask the Economic and Social Council to not just give its opinion, but to as well propose rapid amendments to these two laws by restoring the deleted provisions on the possibility of determining salaries in the public sector through collective agreements, because if not, the next logical steps will be protests and strikes.

The fact that these two laws are hasty and dysfunctional is also shown by the rapid additional changes made last week when it was decided to postpone the implementation of these Laws until January 2027, but this does not answer the question of who wants to reduce the workers' salaries by excluding the collective bargaining and the conclusion of collective agreements.