The new General Collective Agreement („GCA“) has been published at the Official Gazette of Montenegro no. 150/22 on 30, December 2022 and will be valid for period of three years from 31, December 2022 when it came into legal force.
The new GCA is harmonized with the current Labor Law (Official Gazette of Montenegro no. 74/19, 8/21, 59/21, 68/21 and 145/21) and follows its’ legal solutions. It expands employees’ rights and establishes grounds for further activities which would guarantee more rights for employees.
The significant novelty of the new GCA is determination of parameters for the calculation of earnings, which stipulates that job complexity coefficients have been increased. Now they are ranged between 3.3 and 7 compared to the old GCA where the coefficients were ranged between 1.3 and 4.12.
The calculation value of the coefficient for an average of 174 hours on a monthly basis is determined in the amount of EUR 90.00 gross now.
Coefficients established by the new GCA can be detailed by Branch collective agreements and Collective agreements with employer but cannot not be less than the value determined by the new GCA.
Another type of expansion of employees’ rights is in the increase of the basic salary per hour by 80% for working on Sundays, which does not apply to employees who are in workplaces whose nature of work requires continuous work and employees in the hotel industry and public passenger transportation.
Increase of basic salary per hour by 10% on the basis of divided working hours and increase of basic salary per hour by 10% for every hour spent on standby is also predicted.
Another novelty compared to the old GCA is establishment of maximum allowed number of annual overtime hours, which is now limited to 250 hours. According to the Labor Law, maximum number of weekly working hours is set to 50 hours, provided, however that no employee can work more than 48 hours per week, including overtime, on average within the period of four months.
The elected union representatives are now obligated to inform the employer about the upcoming leave in accordance with the law.
Finally, branch collective agreements should be aligned with the new GCA within one year from its’ entry into legal force, and collective agreements with employers should be aligned with the GCA and branch collective agreements within six months from the date of adoption of branch collective agreements.
By Daniel Vujacic, Associate, Vujacic
