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With the decision to give birth to a child, more than 30,000 mothers in the previous two and a half years reduced their income after the baby was born. The calculation is clear if we take into account the data of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs that in the first eleven months of implementation of the new Law on Financial Support for Families with Children, more than 13,000 mothers were harmed by this regulation. As a reminder, the law came into effect in mid-2018, and since then, all women who have less than 18 months of “tied” work experience receive significantly lower earnings while on maternity leave. Many of them started to receive only a few thousand dinars at home, because due to the change in the way wages are calculated, the number of months that a woman has to work continuously to receive the full amount of the salary has increased. from 12 to 18 months.
The law also hurts women with high incomes; for them, the state estimated that three average wages are enough for them during maternity leave. There are about 400 of these women in Serbia, and they are deprived of more than 90,000 dinars each month of the money they earned. This law also affects farmers, who are required by the legislator to have 24-month insurance, unlike other mothers, who must have 18-month insurance to receive compensation for maternity leave.
All these are reasons why in September 2018, the Commissioner for the Protection of Equality Brankica Janković sent an initiative to the Constitutional Court of Serbia to assess constitutionality, and in February 2019 the association “Mama su zakon”, supported by 30 deputies, sent a proposal to evaluate the constitutionality of this law. 22 months after the presentation of the Constitutional Review Proposal, the Constitutional Court ruled that only the treatment of agricultural insured persons is debatable, who, according to the new law, must have 24-month insurance, unlike other mothers who must have 18 months of “Work experience.
Tatjana Matsura, founder of the association “Moms are the law” and former deputy, does not hide her disappointment with this decision of the Constitutional Court and sees the changes announced to the Law of Financial Support to Families with Children as “extinguishing a forest fire with a bucket of water”.
– The Constitutional Court ruled only on discrimination against agricultural insured persons, but refused to rule or did not rule at all on the constitutionality of the provisions relating to mothers who have less than 18 months of work experience, women who must maintain the pregnancy, mothers of children with disabilities, women entrepreneurs, mothers who have given birth to more than four children … The new law deprives parents of children with disabilities of the right to leave compensation from work, that is, they are forced to choose between compensation for leave and the care and assistance of another person. The law also hurts mothers of women entrepreneurs because they are in a position to choose whether to put the business into inactive status during maternity leave or hire a manager to run it. Furthermore, they are not entitled to two years of absence after the birth of the third child, but only to one year of “vacation” from work. By adding all the women who have been harmed by the law that has been in force for two and a half years, it is concluded that at least a third of mothers have worsened their economic situation after the birth of the baby – points out Tatjana Macura. Remember that Serbia is a signatory to the International Convention on Maternity Protection, according to which a mother should not receive an income of less than two thirds of her salary.
Jovana Ružičić, Director of the “Center for Moms”, points out that almost all parents’ associations have asked the Serbian Government to amend the provisions of the Law on Financial Support to Families with Children which significantly deteriorate the quality of life of families in our country. Remember that many ministers, led by Prime Minister Ana Brnabić, promised to change the discriminatory provisions of this law, which has not happened until today.
– The new Government of Serbia also affirms that the birth rate is its priority, but it does not change the provisions of the law that worsen the material condition of mothers and families in our country. Many young women work in the underground economy or do temporary jobs, and the research “Culture of birth and life as a couple in Serbia”, which we carried out in cooperation with the Sociological Research Institute of the Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy, shows that only the half of the mothers in Serbia have permanent jobs. employment: one fifth of them are unemployed and one third work illegally or occasionally have temporary jobs. More than 60 percent of employed mothers in Serbia have an income below the national average. Every seventh mother has less than 150 euros a month at her disposal, and almost half of them earn between 150 and 300 euros in dinars, the youngest mothers have the lowest wages. And the birth rate statistics are expected to change, which attest that every year the city of 36,000 inhabitants disappears due to the white plague – concludes Jovana Ružičić.
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