On Monday, the employees of the Serbian National Theater will hold a third one-hour warning strike because not a single strike demand has been taken into consideration.
Yesterday, the Belgrade Philharmonic sent a letter to the Working Group formed by the Government of Serbia in order to calm the dissatisfaction of the artists due to unacceptably low salaries and the poor conditions in which they work, and pointed out that even after a month, the Philharmonic Orchestra has no representative in the Working Group, and that is why they question the resolution. of the state to truly solve the problems of employees in culture.
"Even the Confederation of Free Trade Unions does not have a representative in the Working Group, because they claim that we are not a representative trade union," Darko Tomović, an actor at the National Theater and president of the Actors' Union of Serbia "Singlus", which is part of the Confederation, tells "Vreme".
In addition to "Singlus", the Confederation of Free Trade Unions includes the Union of Music Artists and the Union of Ballet Dancers.
"They robbed us of our representativeness by expelling jazz musicians because of some legal wording," says Darko Tomović. "Plus, they claim that the actors do not need a representative in the Working Group because we already have one in the Federation of Independent Trade Unions and in UGS Nezavisnost."
"They call for the fact that we are covered by the trade union through the members of the Labor Grip from those two unions. That is formally true, but there is an insignificant number of artists in the Union of Independent Trade Unions and UGS Nezavisnost. The member of the Working Group whom they say is our representative, is not an actor and has no credibility to speak about our salary coefficients," says Tomović.
"It is proof that the Task Force was not created with the real intention and desire to solve the problems of artists, but only to get the job done."
Darko Tomović says that he does not know what the Working Group is doing. "We got the minutes from their meetings, I think there were three of them, which listed who spoke and what. What he said was not even quoted, only the topic of the presentation was stated. I think it's a pretense of solving the problem."
He says that "the result of their work is easy to predict: somewhere before the elections, they will announce, bombastically, that they have solved our problem, and it will only be a half-solution." Then in the fall, they will say that they will deal with the correction, which they will probably finish next June."
Darko Tomović says that he proposed the suspension of work, but was outvoted. "I think settling for an illusion is taking too long."
The Union of Music Artists is also not in the Working Group, although it has existed for 23 years, and although their members are orchestral and vocal artists from the Belgrade Philharmonic, the National Theatre, the Serbian National Theatre, the Music Production of the Radio Television of Serbia, the Terazije Theater, the Niš Symphony Orchestra and the People's Ensemble songs and games Kolo.
And here's who it is:
The Government of Serbia appointed representatives of the Ministry of Culture, the Republic Secretariat for Legislation, the Ministry of State Administration and Local Self-Government, the Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veterans and Social Affairs, the Ministry of Finance to the Working Group for the Improvement of the Material and Labor-Legal Position of Employees in Cultural Institutions. General Secretariat of the Government, and representatives of the Independent Union of Culture of Serbia and the Branch Union of Culture, Art and Media "Nezavisnost".
