“The ground staff at the Belgrade airport, which is managed by the French company Vinci, is on strike and because of this, the airport is in utter chaos and passengers have to wait for several hours to board”, said Đorđe Miketić, an MP from the Zajedno political party, regarding the very long queues at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla Airport.
Miketić believes that it is necessary to urgently send a labour inspection there.
“According to the information that I had insight into as a member of parliament, the ground staff and employees of Vinci are on a silent strike, more precisely they are properly processing every second suitcase because the company refuses to raise their salaries”, he adds.
According to him, the problem arose because Air Serbia has its own ground staff that only serves their planes and they have higher salaries than Vinci employees.
“They (Air Serbia) asked the French company to pay the same amount to their employees who do the same job, but they refused so Vinci employees have decided to go on a silent strike. In response, Vinci launched a competition for new workers. The State Labour Inspectorate did not inspect the situation, although the line minister Goran Vesić said they would. Instead, everyone ignores the problem and the passengers are the ones who suffer the most”, pointed out Miketić.
Apart from demanding that labour inspectors check the ongoing problem with Belgrade airport, the Zajedno political party is also demanding that the contract between the Serbian government and Vinci should be publicly revealed and that the Labour Law should be changed to put workers first.
“We have to decide whether we want to protect workers or investors. Every investor is welcome, but they must work transparently, in line with the law and respect the rights of workers like they do in France”, Miketić concluded.
(Vreme.com, 25.07.2023)
https://www.vreme.com/vesti/djordje-miketic-na-aerodromu-je-tihi-strajk/
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