Strike of Judicial Administration

AIM Skopje, December 14, 2000

Front doors of all halls of justice in Macedonia are locked up since December 10. Headed by the Trade Union of Employees in Civil Services, the Judiciary and Civic Associations (UPOZ), around three thousand administrative workers in the judiciary have started a battle for a raise of salaries and achievement of other employment rights denied them

• they claim illegitimately and without any explanation – three years ago. They are dissatisfied with salaries averaging 6000 denars, i.e. barely 200 DM (1 DM = 31 denars), inadequate to provide for even the basic necessities of life. The sum is lower than the state average of 320 DM paid out in November 2000 and the strikers have not had a raise in nine years. They feel discriminated, not only in relation to their superiors whose earnings have recently been increased by a monthly lump sum of 8 to 12 thousand denars, but also in relation to their colleagues employed in the army and the police who have had two salary raises in the meantime and whose earnings are allegedly considerably higher than theirs. Thus - unanimously, firmly and unconditionally - they request a rise of minimum 30 per cents and a monthly judicial bonus (not lower than a half of the lump sum allotted to judges); they also demand an urgent pay out of the compensation for past employment due to them according to the Collective Contract, arbitrarily denied them by an unspecified authority.

Because of the strike of the judicial administrative apparatus, the second in the past three years, the Macedonian government is completely blocked, similarly to what happened in the fall of 1997. Courts of law in the entire country are shut down. The administrative workers come to work everyday, but do nothing. This applies to judges and lawyers who support the strikers as well. All summonses have been canceled, new cases are not being accepted. As prescribed by law, only urgent cases such as traffic accidents, murders and the like are processed.

The competent Minister of Justice Dzevdet Nasufi rushed to make it known that the government has no intention of meeting the demands of the dissatisfied judicial clerks at the moment. They will have to wait until the new budget for 2001, presently being negotiated with the International Monetary FunD (IMF) mission in Skopje, is adopted, the minister declared. He admitted that clerical salaries are indeed meager and the social standing of the strikers unenviable but, he said, their situation is far from being unique. Since a lot of other workers share their fate, the minister suggested they go back to work and arm themselves with patience. The reforms Macedonia is undertaking in cooperation with the IMF and the World Bank have their price and it has to be met, minister Nasufi pointed out. He did admit that someone had made a mistake by withholding the compensation for past labour from the judicial administrative workers, promising to find out who that someone had nbeen and to establish his responsibility - responsibility being an entirely abstract concept in Macedonia - adding that he will order an urgent pay out of outstanding debts by the end of the year. And that is about all the strikers can hope for, says minister Nasufi.

Mr. Simeon Gelevski, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Macedonia, made his opinion on the subject widely known, too. He addressed the strikers with a lengthy memorandum which warned them "to be mindful of their actions" because courts of law are not a fitting stage for strikes, but rather places where justice is administered in the best interest of the citizens and the state. The carefully worded, three pages long text was read aloud throughout the courts and the strikers discerned a threatening note to it, says the leader of UPOZ, Vanco Muratovski. They were, Muratovski underlined, particularly embittered because of widespread pressures exerted on them to "abstain from blackmailing" which, according to Muratovski, only strengthens the strikers' resolve to persevere in their demands to the very end this time. But, what hurt them the most is the nonchalant attitude of the government in regard to their bitter existential problems. At the time of the first strike, a deal was struck with the government that it would correct the salaries of employees in the judiciary upon the adoption of the autonomous judicial budget. To this very day, the government has not fulfilled this obligation. That is why this time the strike will last three months if necessary. According to Muratovski, the possibility of the strike spilling over into the streets of the state capital as a measure of exerting pressure on the government is not to be ruled out.

The spokesman of the government Antonio Milososki says that a governmental investigative board has already been set up with the aim to establish the identity of the person who failed to update facts pertaining to the pay out of past employment compensation fees administrative workers in the judiciary are entitled to, adding that the authorities are also willing to compensate for travel expenses amounting to 900 denars (30 DM) to a certain number of courts of law. The standards by which these individual courts are to be chosen are not known.

As far as the public and the government in Macedonia are concerned, they seem to demonstrate a considerable measure of restraint regarding the strike of the judicial administration. The opposition-oriented media judge the present social peace as being fictitious and predict "further headaches" for the government. The Council of the Trade Union League of Macedonia has set December 21 as the date of a general strike in the country.

The pro-government "Nova Makedonija" claims that, headed by the "not destined ambassador in the FBIH", Vanco Muratovski, the strikers have carried out a specific putsch at the least expected moment, at the very time the government is negotiating an approval for an increase in salaries for all civil servants in its talks with the international financial gendarmes. The "putsch" is actually inspired by social motives, but there are elements of a "vindictive conspiracy" in its mode of execution, it is pointed out on the front page of this journal which accuses the organizer, UPOZ, of deliberately selecting the "rules of the game" and consciously bypassing the "judicial constitution" - the Civil Servants Act which forbids the judiciary to go on strike. There are unconcealed suspicions that the strike of the judicial administration, along with the massive student's protests which took place in Skopje recently, as well as the present, week-long blockade of the state Assembly, are all a part of a broader operation devised by the opposition in order to provoke chaos in the country, overthrow the government of Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski and bring about the issuing of writs for extraordinary parliamentary elections.

AIM Skopje

BRANKA NANEVSKA