Pressure from employers and widespread practices of hiring workers outside of formal employment contracts makes union organizing in the Serbian fast food industry practically impossible. This is the story of one worker who defied those odds.
Author: Igor Išpanović
An insignificant percentage of workers in the hospitality and fast food industries in Serbia are union-organized. The structure of the workforce in this sector, which has many students or people just before retirement, high turnover rates and frequent hiring outside of the employment relationship are just some of the challenges causing this.
For these reasons the president of the agriculture and processing industries branch at union “Nezavisnost,” Dejan Titović, thinks that it is much harder to organize these workers than those in factories.
“We invited them multiple times to organize a work stoppage, a strike, we tried in a thousand and one ways, but it’s all a long shot. People are extremely scared,” he says.
Despite all that, at the end of 2019 in Serbia, a union of McDonald’s workers appeared, making it a rare example of this type of organizing in this franchise in Europe at the time.
“I noticed that, once you get there, you’re just a number, one item in the budget,” says David, a former McDonald’s worker whose real identity is known to this author, and the one who started the worker’s initiative in the popular fast food chain.
They worked on the union in secret for years. However, once it was formally established, the workers behind it quickly won regular overtime payment and protection for the team of one restaurant after they returned to work in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, by moving workers to other locations, following one of its main representatives, and having founded union under its own control, Nicefoods Restaurants, the official McDonald’s franchisee in Serbia, made sure that this attempt was short-lived.
“They talk about it as if it’s a legend. I mean everybody talks about it, even managers, everyone. Whenever someone mentions worker’s rights,” says Neda, a worker in a McDonald’s restaurant in Belgrade whose real identity is known to this author.
Another factor which makes it even more difficult to organize workers in this sector is the frequent practice of hiring people outside the employment relationship through youth or student cooperatives. Employers benefit from those workers, says lawyer Mario Reljanović, because they are cheaper and completely unprotected.
“They don’t have a right to strike, join a union, collective bargaining, and they lack a whole series of individual rights. Their contract can be cancelled at any time, without giving a reason and without the possibility to challenge that firing in court,” he explains.
Nicefoods Restaurants did not respond to questions related to this topic before this text was published.
Në kërkim të punëtorëve të gatshëm për të luftuar
“Back then I was starting from zero, I only knew the people from my location,” David says, recalling his first meetings with colleagues on forming the union, over ten years ago.
According to the Labor Law, this former McDonald’s employee had to gather at least 15% of total employees for his union to meet the conditions for representativeness.
“So, back then I needed 120-150 people, but it’s not like we all work in one factory where we’re all in one place together at some point. This is a company with over 1000 employees and restaurants in over 30 locations in different cities. Had I not wanted to organize a union, I never would have visited all the McDonald’s in Serbia,” he says.
A union which meets conditions for representation has, among others, the right to collective bargaining and signing a collective agreement. However, McDonald’s at that time already had a union negotiating a collective agreement with the employer. At its head is, according to David, a person from the very highest levels of management at Nicefoods Restaurants.
“Those are called yellow or house unions. Basically, the employer creates that union to prevent real union organizing. And the way they get members is that, when you sign your contract, they have you sign a membership form as well. Now you try not joining,” he says, adding that this means that the employer basically negotiated the collective agreement with itself.
Neda claims that her supervisor never mentioned a collective agreement to her, nor what is written in it. David, who requested access to that agreement when founding the union, explains that it does not improve the position of workers in any way.
“All rights which are in it are already guaranteed by the Labour Law,” he says.
Besides the conditions for representativeness and the house union, he says that the main challenge in organizing workers is the McDonald’s practice of hiring a significant number of workers through youth or student cooperatives.
#PočinjemIzMeka (#IStartatMcDs)
Even though his first conversation about a union with his colleagues took place around 10 years ago, David says that he only managed to get a “core” team around him in 2018.
“The people change, that’s typical for the fast food industry,” he says.
Neda also hadn’t planned to stay for long. She filled out an application form on their website with the goal of getting pocket money for summer vacation. Still, after the interview she was told that she has to join a youth cooperative before she could start working.
Even though in the contract on temporary and periodical jobs which Neda signed with the cooperative it said she was being hired for kitchen assistance, but she says that after a week she was already working in service.
“I mean, that’s like, counter, sodas, ice cream, fries…and the register,” she explains.
According to the Labor Law, the employer can sign a contract with a member of a youth or student cooperative for completing temporary and periodical jobs.
The lawyer Mario Reljanović says that this practice is violated because the part of the law which relates to the types of jobs young people like Neda usually fulfill during these gigs is broken.
“They are brought in to work jobs which are neither temporary, nor periodical, but where there is a continuous need for workers. Their tasks are part of the basic activity of the employer, and this practice is just covering up the company’s desire to not sign an employment contract with these people, even though that is basically the only way that they can legally be hired for the positions they are fulfilling,” says Reljanović, adding that these jobs often result in labor exploitation of young people.
The official McDonald’s website lists flexible hours and the possibility of picking your own shifts as one of the benefits of employment in this fast food chain. However, Neda’s experience shows that workers are not always consulted regarding when and how long they will work.
“They just call you, come at five, no, at three. That changes throughout the day, especially if there isn’t any work. Those are some things they try, and if it works, it works. You have someone who will tell you, okay, I’ll go home, or, okay, I’ll shorten my shift. I don’t allow it anymore because they used to shorten my hours constantly,” she says.
David highlights the same problem.
“It’s expected that you’re at the company’s disposal, even outside of work hours. There’s no problem if a manager calls you, basically at any time of day, and says, hey, can you come earlier or later, you’re staying until then or then. That’s especially common among those employed through the youth cooperatives, they’re here to fill in the gaps,” he says.
This practice affects the salaries workers receive. Besides flexible work hours, another benefit that McDonald’s highlights is that “you can always know ahead of time how much money you will earn.”
Even though Neda says that the salary is paid on time, she’s often not sure herself which amount will be deposited into her account at the beginning of the month.
“Nobody can understand the way that the salary is calculated. Not even mom’s accountant could calculate how I got that salary. Twelve pay slips, twelve different amounts,” she says.
Small victories and big battles
The wave of union organizing among workers in the hospitality and fast food industry has increased globally over the past few years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers in the coffee shop chain Starbucks founded a union in at least 650 locations across the United States. Because of the attempt to break their unionization campaign, the company’s former director, Howard Schultz, testified in front of the U.S. Congress in 2023.
David experienced similar resistance.
“7-8 people from the restaurant in Big Fashion mall joined us. However, all of them were quickly transferred to different restaurants and that team was broken. One by one they called, like, unionizing isn’t for us. I tried to find out what happened, but they didn’t want to tell me anything more than that,” he says, and adds that he thinks that management would have gotten rid of them if they’d found out about the union drive before they were able to register it.
However, despite its short-lived nature and challenges, the worker’s union in McDonald’s was able to achieve a few victories and fight for better labor conditions in this fast food chain.
One of the first battles which they took up, David explains, had to do with working hours.
“There was one misuse, I would say, with redistributing working hours. The company used that so people would work a lot longer than what was allowed by law. And then they paid each hour regularly, not like overtime. We were able to correct that,” he recalls.
The significance of the union was especially noticeable in the months after his return to work in the restaurant after the shutdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We worked too much when we opened again, for months with one day off. We didn’t know our schedule ahead of time,” David explains.
Workers hired through youth cooperatives had the additional fear of getting sick. People who work on the basis of contracts on temporary and periodical jobs do not have the right to sick leave.
They included those workers in the fight, this former McDonald’s worker continues.
“We united around three demands – that they get employment contracts, that we get our schedule on time, and that we get two days off. That was successfully executed in my restaurant. We tried to pull that off in others, but by then management was alerted to what was going on. They followed me from restaurant to restaurant, where did I go, what did I say,” he explains.
The president of the branch union of the agriculture and processing industries “Nezavisnost,” Dejan Titović, who helped found the union in McDonald’s, says that they faced similar pressures in another popular chain.
“We wanted to organize workers in Starbucks, but as soon as management heard about that, they decided not to extend the contract of the guy who started that story over there. That sparked fear among the others,” he said.
To prevent that, “Nezavisnost” decided to try other tactics to protect these workers.
“We try to get to people before they get hired, to talk to them so they can directly join the headquarters, the branch union. Creating an organization with that employer needs to happen later, when you gather a good number,” Titović explains.
Besides that, they have been negotiating for years with the Serbian Association of Employers on building a branch collective agreement at the state level. Despite silence from the other side, one fact stops him from giving up.
“The only branch in Serbia which meets the conditions, which has 51% membership in the Serbian Association of Employers, is hospitality. That means that, if we got that branch collective agreement, all employers in this sector would have to respect the conditions we negotiate, regardless of the fact if they’re members or not,” he says.
This initiative and the suggestion for a branch collective agreement were last submitted last year. The only response they’ve gotten so far have been promises.
The author is a Research Assistant at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, based in Belgrade. In addition, he is active as an independent investigative journalist, collaborating with several national and regional research centers in Serbia and across the Balkans.
This article was written within the framework of the Decent Work platform, led by the Musine Kokalari Institute for Social Policy and the Center for Emancipation Policies in Serbia, a project supported by the European Fund for the Balkans.