{"id":7015,"date":"2023-05-02T22:34:23","date_gmt":"2023-05-02T20:34:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usscg.me\/?p=7015"},"modified":"2023-05-04T22:49:55","modified_gmt":"2023-05-04T20:49:55","slug":"montenegro-telecom-workers-win-end-to-14-year-wage-freeze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usscg.me\/en\/2023\/05\/02\/montenegro-telecom-workers-win-end-to-14-year-wage-freeze\/","title":{"rendered":"MONTENEGRO TELECOM WORKERS WIN END TO 14-YEAR WAGE FREEZE"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Telecommunications unions met in Belgrade this month to share sector challenges and wins in the region, including Albanian Telecommunications Union SPPTSH President Renato Mucaj, Trade Union of Telecom of Montenegro (STCG) President Zeljko Buric and Transport and Telecommunications Union of Serbia GS SITEL Nezavisnost President Aleksandar Titovic. Credit: Steven McCloud \/ Solidarity Center<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Following a\u00a0136-day strike<\/a>, Montenegro\u2019s telecom workers are celebrating a collective agreement that reverses a 14-year wage freeze and interrupts more than a decade of\u00a0alleged union-busting tactics<\/a>\u00a0by Crnogorski Telekom (CT), majority owned by\u00a0Deutsche Telecom<\/a>\u00a0since 2005.<\/p>\n

The agreement won by the\u00a0Trade Union of Telecom of Montenegro<\/a>\u00a0(STCG) immediately increases workers\u2019 wages by 15 percent and provides an additional 5 percent total wage increase through 2025. Workers also negotiated improved benefits, job cut limits and, for the first time, severance pay.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe company could not claim any more that the wage increase was inadmissible, given that every year it distributed dividends to shareholders and paid bonuses to already highly paid managers,\u201d says Buri\u0107. \u201cSince 2008, their profit has exceeded half a billion euros,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

CT last gave workers a pay raise in 2008, even though consumer prices in Montenegro increased more than\u00a045 percent<\/a>\u00a0from 2006 through 2021, and workers have been carrying an increased workload. The company slashed jobs by almost two-thirds since Deutsche Telecom took majority ownership, says STCG.<\/p>\n

During its ongoing wage battle with the union, CT violated the country\u2019s labor law by threatening to abolish the union\u2019s collective agreement and refusing to negotiate with workers\u2019 democratically elected leaders,\u00a0say unions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The agreement was won in spite of CT\u2019s effort to violate numerous fundamental labor rights in the most egregious way,\u201d says STCG President \u017deljko Buri\u0107.<\/p>\n

Solidarity support for STCG\u2019s campaign was provided in Montenegro by the Union of Free Trade Unions of Montenegro (UFTUM<\/a>) and its affiliates. Other union and worker rights organizations supporting the campaign included the Albanian Telecommunications Union\u00a0SPPTSH<\/a>, Alliance One Telekom Union (OTU<\/a>), the\u00a0Croatian Telecommunications Union HST<\/a>, the\u00a0cooperation project<\/a>\u00a0of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC<\/a>) under the\u00a0European Commission<\/a>\u00a0with regional network\u00a0Solidarnost,\u00a0<\/a>the Transport and Telecommunications Union of Serbia\u00a0GS SITEL Nezavisnost<\/a>, Germany\u2019s\u00a0Ver.di<\/a>,\u00a0ETUC<\/a>, the Solidarity Center, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC<\/a>) and\u00a0UNI Global Union<\/a>. STCG is an\u00a0ITUC<\/a>\u00a0member and founding\u00a0UFTUM<\/a>\u00a0member.<\/p>\n

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Source: https:\/\/www.solidaritycenter.org\/montenegro-telecom-workers-win-end-to-14-year-wage-freeze\/<\/em>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Following a\u00a0136-day strike, Montenegro\u2019s telecom workers are celebrating a collective agreement that reverses a 14-year wage freeze and interrupts more than a decade of\u00a0alleged union-busting tactics\u00a0by Crnogorski Telekom (CT), majority owned by\u00a0Deutsche Telecom\u00a0since 2005. The agreement won by the\u00a0Trade Union of Telecom of Montenegro\u00a0(STCG) immediately increases workers\u2019 wages by 15 percent and provides an<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7016,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[100],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usscg.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7015"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usscg.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usscg.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usscg.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usscg.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7015"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/usscg.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7019,"href":"https:\/\/usscg.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7015\/revisions\/7019"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usscg.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usscg.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usscg.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usscg.me\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}