The economic crisis has already begun, and this crisis inevitably hits the poorest segments of society the hardest \u2013 social cases, the unemployed, as well as low-income workers. This is true for every country and is becoming particularly severe in Kosovo.<\/p>\n\n
Private sector workers are the most at risk for many reasons.<\/p>\n\n
Most of them are workers with short-term contracts and no institutional support. Being mostly employed in jobs that do not require qualified labor, they are easily replaceable. Under such circumstances, these workers live under a high and daily risk of losing their jobs. Now, given the current health and especially economic emergency, these are the people whose employment relationships are being suspended. It is true that the government\u2019s fiscal emergency package covers these workers\u2019 salaries at an amount of 170 euros (currently only for April and May). However, this is extremely insufficient for a minimum living standard for an average family in Kosovo (4\u20135 members). This situation is even more severe considering that most of the people with employment contracts already have bank loans planned to be paid through their salaries (300\u2013400 euros per month).<\/p>\n\n
Another even more vulnerable category of workers are those without regular contracts. The number of unregistered workers in Kosovo reaches up to 35% of the total workforce (Analysis of the Grey Economy in Kosovo, ASHAK 2019). This portion of the workforce automatically falls into a situation with no monthly income, and since they do not appear in official registers, they essentially do not exist for public institutions. Consequently, they cannot receive any support except registering as unemployed to secure a monthly income of 130 euros. However, this possibility remains uncertain, as the Government\u2019s Emergency Package guarantees a fund to cover \u201cmonthly assistance payments in the amount of one hundred and thirty euros (\u20ac130) for citizens who lose their jobs due to the public health emergency, for the months of April, May, and June\u2026\u201d Yet, workers without contracts find it impossible to prove they have lost their jobs since they were never officially employed. Even if they qualify for this scheme, they would drop from earning 300\u2013400 euros per month to 0\u2013130 euros per month overnight. Moreover, while working as unregistered workers, their rights were severely violated, and their incomes were limited (considering that pension contributions were not paid on their behalf). Adding to this are the persistent delays in monthly salaries and debts accumulated by employers who exploited the difficult position of these workers. All of this remains undocumented injustice.<\/p>\n\n
The vast majority of these workers come from sectors without any trade union organization in Kosovo, such as construction, hospitality, the financial sector, wholesale and retail trade, and small to medium manufacturing enterprises. They are almost entirely uncovered by current unions (for the sake of accuracy, the Private Sector Union operates in Kosovo, but a significant portion of these workers are neither members nor even aware of its existence). Consequently, these workers have been left alone, and unfortunately, the Government views this economic problem and the current crisis only through two lenses: that of business (capital) and its needs; and that of poverty, for which it proposes mitigating charitable measures rather than social policies based on rights and the principles of solidarity and equality. Meanwhile, the unions are not heard speaking about these categories since they do not have members from these groups (and therefore no clients).<\/p>\n\n
The worsened situation of these workers during this time of crisis strongly highlights the necessity of strengthening trade union organization in Kosovo. Strengthening means expanding union organization across many active sectors of our economy that are currently completely outside such organization. Naturally, the working conditions in which these workers operate make union organization quite difficult. The sectors mentioned above mostly require unskilled or low-skilled labor. This makes these workers easily replaceable and, as such, much more exploitable. However, at this point, strong support from public institutions is needed to guarantee these workers job security and the right to unionize. In this regard, amendments should also be made to the Labor Law to eliminate the extreme and absurd flexibility of contracts in this law. The current Labor Law does not specify a minimum duration for employment contracts. The only specified term is the maximum duration (10 years) for a fixed-term contract. If this duration is exceeded, the contract is considered open-ended. The absence of a minimum term (e.g., prohibiting contracts shorter than one year) creates great insecurity for workers, as it has already been proven that short-term contracts are used as a disciplinary tool against workers, greatly increasing employer arbitrariness and limiting workers\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n\n
Such trade union organization would bring many benefits to both the state and our society. First, because these workers, united and organized, would have much greater capacity to improve their working conditions, including their wages. Increasing wages in the private sector benefits the economy in general, as it raises aggregate social demand. Secondly, trade union organization would also accelerate the registration of these workers and reduce the grey economy in this field. Union membership becomes very attractive to workers when there is no fear of job loss. In this way, they would become legalized through union registration. This would directly help our state by increasing the amount of money collected through taxes.<\/p>\n\n
The current crisis has also highlighted a significant weakness of the Republic of Kosovo, and especially its workers \u2014 the absence of an Unemployment Fund. Naturally, such a fund alone could not cover the enormous and sudden burden caused by this crisis. However, crises like these in micro economic-social structures occur constantly in our economy. Just as it is unbearable when the majority of employed people in Kosovo have no income due to the pandemic, it is equally unbearable for individual workers to lose their jobs during normal times. This crisis shows how important it is to protect the rights and interests of workers in Kosovo. Now that we are all feeling the crisis, it should remind and raise awareness of how difficult and unfair it is to face such crises. We should also understand that there are others for whom facing this is almost a daily matter. They, and potentially each one of us, greatly need institutional support in case of job loss. Therefore, the Unemployment Fund is a social and economic necessity for our country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The economic crisis has already begun, and this crisis inevitably hits the poorest segments of society the hardest \u2013 social cases, the unemployed, as well as low-income workers. This is true for every country and is becoming particularly severe in Kosovo. Private sector workers are the most at risk for many reasons. Most of them […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":580,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musineinstitute.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musineinstitute.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musineinstitute.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musineinstitute.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musineinstitute.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/musineinstitute.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7053,"href":"https:\/\/musineinstitute.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions\/7053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musineinstitute.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musineinstitute.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musineinstitute.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musineinstitute.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}