One of the most important laws, Labour law, soon will be substantially altered without adequate public debate. In a country where even the minimum rights provided by the Labour law have not been respected for years, and as well the unemployment is growing or stagnating, these changes would have to be in the center of interest of the expert and the general public. However, in practice, everything looks different. Mentioning of the draft law provisions are partial, inaccurate and untimely, from which it can be concluded that there is no will to develop constructive exchange of opinions.No expert debate for a wider professional audience was organized and opportunity for expression of opinions and suggestions on the future legislative solutions was not provided. This is not the first time that representatives of the legislative and executive authorities claim that public discussion is in fact done through media reports on issue and parliamentary debate itself, and that the government gained legitimacy for systemic changes in the election.
Unfortunately these attitudes are reveling complete misunderstanding for the mechanisms of government control. Public debate exists not only to include various stakeholders’ suggestions in the law, but to clearly show to as many citizens as possible how proposed the changes will impact implementation of different rights in the future. This is important, among other things, so that citizens are able to make decisions during one election cycle, on the basis of results rather than media campaigns, and to create a clear picture of the results of the decision makers. Unfortunately we are confident that the vast majority of concerned citizens from the huddle of semi clear messages failed to distinguish more than the general point that “the aim of amending the Labour Law is creating new jobs through flexible labor market and the new terms of employment for a certain period of time.”
In addition to that , among others, the following important issues will be addressed by Law: the decrease of the deadline for the launch of a labor dispute and the increase in terms of termination of employment for certain reasons of cancellation; different regulation of unlawful dismissal; determination the representativeness of trade unions; repeal of booklet ( radna knjizica) after the 2016; termination of collective agreements in the Republic of Serbia within six months; problem of discrimination in the workplace.
All these questions and many others deserve fair and efficient public debate, and more importantly the citizens of Serbia deserve respect of the democratic processes and the right to make decisions based on facts.
