WE INCREASED THE MINIMUM SALARY BY 5,000 DENARS FOR 1 YEAR

The strikes, protests, and negotiations that we conducted throughout the past year are yielding results this year as well, and the Union of Trade Unions of Macedonia, through its activities, managed to increase the minimum wage by 5,000 denars, if we keep in mind that by March 2022 the minimum wage was 15,194 denars, and from March 2023 it will amount to more than 20,100 denars." - Slobodan Trendafilov from SSM

It is also significant that in the private sector, where we have unions, workers' wages have increased almost everywhere with the previous increase in the minimum wage from MKD 2,806, and this year, even before the increase in the minimum wage, we are already negotiating for a new increase in the wages of the workers who are unionized in the private sector.

In the public sector, on the other hand, we were forced to organize a General Strike which is still going on and which enabled 85% of the employees in the public sector to receive an increase in their salaries, and with the pressure we exerted, we changed the Law on Administrative Officers which will allow a linear increase in salaries of all employees to whom this law applies, as well as for employees for whom employers in the public sector, in the absence of other legal provisions, apply this law for the payment of salaries, which, according to our calculations, would linearly increase the salaries of over 50,000 workers in the public sector with the salary from March 2023, and consequently, through the already signed collective agreements and agreements, salaries will also grow wherever we have a union and a signed collective agreement or agreement.

What we were able to achieve through social dialogue, due to the Government's ignorant attitude, we achieved through protests and strikes, so today, what for the ministers was an ad-hoc and hasty request and solution of the SSM, such as the linear salary increase with the increase in the minimum wage, now a systemic solution has been sustained, i.e. the Government is one year behind the SSM and the unions united in the SSM in creating measures to increase the labor standard and the same place to create, copies solutions for increasing wages right from the SSM.

What the government ministers are declaring and saying today, we have been saying and demanding since last year, and we remind you that none of the labor rights were given to us by anyone, we have elected ourselves for each of them, concluded Trendafilov.

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