The May Day request of the Union of Trade Unions for a salary increase to 450 euros has already been exceeded, because in the meantime inflation continued to eat up the union basket.

However, what is good is that, unlike the initial hard position regarding the salary increase, the Government is giving in, the rhetoric is changing, and in the Draft Budget for 2025 there is money intended for the growth of the minimum wage, he says in a conversation for the morning show of "Sloboden Pechat" Slobodan Trendafilov, president of the Union of Trade Unions.

- Back in May, we asked for 450 euros to be the minimum wage. Back then, the minimum wage in Montenegro was 450 euros. Today there is 600 euros for those with lower qualifications and 800 euros with higher education.

The salary from the first of January in Croatia also increases to 677 euros in net amount, in Serbia it will be 454 euros. We of our colleagues had this information already on May 1 when we came out with our request.

Our request was so that the citizens could meet their minimum needs, starting from the fact that 23.000 denars are needed for food and drinks in the basket of a family of four - says Trendafilov.

In relation to the employers' comments that an administrative, forced salary increase is counterproductive, without increasing productivity, Trendafilov says that if it were not for the pressures from the Trade Union to increase the minimum wage, salaries of 10.000 denars would still be distributed.

However, he says that employers in the private sector with whom they have a dialogue – with the Organization of Employers as a social partner and where there is a trade union, there are no workers with minimum wages.

- Employers do not have a problem with the increase of the minimum wage, but they do have a problem with paying the part for the mandatory insurance and according to data from the International Labor Organization, they cheat the state with 250 million euros per year, that is, they do not pay that much money into the Pension Fund and in the Health Fund, for unemployment - says Trendafilov.

He also informs that they have excellent cooperation with the State Labor Inspectorate, and that there is a quick reaction in terms of complaints, but he notes that the workers behave indifferently when they receive part of the salary in hand.

- So that there is no "black money" on hand, we believe that the state should help them in a certain way for this increase in the minimum wage, that is, those who will have a problem paying the increase, should receive certain financial subsidies for the contributions - says Trendafilov.

Trendafilov is adamant that the stories that Macedonian workers are unproductive should end, even though this is the main remark of all international institutions.

- In the private sector, the excuses that workers are not productive are over, especially if you look at the last financial reports for the previous year, what enormous profits the companies have made. So, if the workers were not productive, would they have managed to make such an enormous amount of profits in such a way?

I am talking about that, in addition to everything that has been paid in the current year, including the salaries of the workers, they have such profits left over.

Another data is worrying - Macedonia may be one of the few countries where between 15 and 20 percent is set aside for salaries from the employers' capital, and everything else goes into their pockets, while in Europe it is somewhere between 60 and 70 percent as a ratio - he claims. Trendafilov.