NEITHER WORKING HOURS NOR YEARS OF SERVICE

16. July 2013.

Bujanovac - They have neither the working hours nor the years of service. Every day, in the city center, Roma persons from Bujanovac seek jobs and reach agreements on labor costs with their potential employers. Labor costs are agreed per hour or per day, depending on the type of work.

Since they are unskilled workers, they are willing to do all the jobs they can - staring from transport-related jobs, waste and rubble disposal ones, to those related to the preparation of firewood for winter. Although they are there every day, they say that there is work only four or five days a month.

“I cut three meters of wood, take 600 dinars for it and then go home. We sometimes struck the deal for 100 or 150 dinars, but what can I do about it", said Emrak Morina.

A kind of open labor market isn’t organized by the trade union, and there are no leaders or managers, either. The emergence of a potential employer may cause a fight, but a mutual agreement on the division of work occurs more often.

“We unload goods together, a little for him, a little to me, and so we pass through the winter ", says Samir Radžipi.

The machines that they drive aren’t classical, either. Those machines aren’t cars or engines, or cultivators, but handmade things, a combination of several vehicles.

The internal control is conducted by the wives and children who regularly come to check the earnings.

"I’ve just come to my husband to ask him for the money for bread, since the kids are hungry", said Dzemila Morina.

The most persistent persons are at the same place in Bujanovac every day, both in winter and summer. A day or two without a job, and then the employer comes along. He considers the offer and then hires one or two persons. The others wait for the next opportunity or chance.

Source: RTS1