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Entrepreneurs really need to be aware of a phenomenon like insurance, after all, they insure their businesses. Similarly, employees are insured against unemployment, pay contributions and are entitled to benefits in the event of an insured event, that is, loss of employment. In Lithuania, in general, unemployment benefits are one of the lowest and the least paid in the EU, so they need to be increased and paid for longer.
Recently, the Lithuanian Trade Union Confederation has been calling out indignant older people who say they do not understand the cries of employers for the lack of employees, because their own efforts to find work bounce off the border. This has highlighted the trend that entrepreneurs need young and strong, as the workload on offer is unbearable for older people. When you call below a job advertisement, just state your age and you will be answered. The horses driven are not shot now, they are simply not hired.
If the salary offered is higher than the minimum wage, you will usually have to work so hard that you will be satisfied just because you sometimes sleep. In addition to cleaning large surfaces, stores also offer to maintain, for example, the vegetable section. In the production plant 40 hours. the workweek becomes work every day after ten hours with a holiday on Sunday. Or even an eight-hour shift, but in the fridge, without a break and only with a twenty-minute lunch break. Or at any gas station you will not only sell merchandise, bake sausages, but also wash the bathrooms and clean the area after hours, and you will have to go home by taxi for your money, because there is no public transport.
Unaccounted for (and therefore unpaid) overtime is so prevalent that it can be boldly called a pest.
There are countless examples, and entrepreneurs tell me that we are constantly talking only about bad employers, that these are purely exceptional cases. Many desperate people approach us who end up losing their physical and mental health while working in inhumane conditions. Some of them would definitely choose to starve rather than lose their health permanently or even die at work.
Unions can be blamed for subjectivity or even ignorance, but the survey by the insurance company did in numbers: 51 percent. Employees in Lithuania work in an environment that does not satisfy them at all. Another 35 percent. respondents work in moderately satisfactory working conditions and only 14% According to them, Lithuanian employees have a good job and adequate working conditions.
So if a company is alive just because employees are exploited, it is not even worth the name of the company. I was struck by the desire expressed at the meeting of the Council of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises of Lithuania to create a mechanism that would “force” people to work. It is alleged that there is no higher salary to pay, nor has a decent attitude towards employees emerged in thirty years.
In this case, a representative of not so small Linava stated in general that the desire to improve the working conditions of employees is “moose.” Another hiss colleague has previously said that drivers are simply “brooms.” Then everyone is to blame: the government for ruining the business by urging workers to improve working conditions, the unions for not trying to “understand” the employers and the workers themselves for being lazy and wasteful.
To do?
Employers must fundamentally change their attitudes towards employees, workers can no longer be seen as servants or, worse, as tools that can be thrown away. When entrepreneurs don’t just don’t talk, they don’t think of employees as brooms, when they realize that they need to be treated together as value-added partners, then and only then will it be possible to talk about a healthy work environment. where they want to work.
This, of course, will also require the efforts of the workers themselves, who must be directed towards a united and organized struggle for better working conditions.
The author of the comment is the president of the Lithuanian Trade Union Confederation.
