As one of the first problems, we highlight the fact that the Belgrade Social Work Centre has been on strike since 24^th February, nearly two months ago, and the strike is still ongoing with the strikers’ demands unfulfilled. In fact, there has hardly been any movement from the deadlock. Of the seventeen Belgrade centres, sixteen are still on strike, respecting the legally determined minimum service requirements.

Despite this happening for two months now, due to the complex political context, these workers have fallen somewhat out of focus, so it appears that the culmination is now multifaceted – on one hand, institutions largely ignoring the demands of social service workers; on the other, media that now lack sufficient capacity to cover the story; thirdly, the workers themselves whose strike is entering its third month in a few days; and fourthly, service users who certainly suffer the consequences (but at the same time – conscious that meeting the strikers’ demands is the best way for them to begin exercising their rights, and therefore supporting this strike). We thus spoke with Jelena Đukanović from the strike committee and discovered a layered problem – we pity in advance any minister who genuinely wants to make social work centres effective.

Interestingly, we began our conversation with perception. Because social work centres truly have a serious problem: public perception which – one could comfortably say – views social work centres as a very convenient punching bag. The resentment, however, is not completely unfounded; case resolution is indeed slow and inefficient, but this sluggishness is primarily influenced by the numbers.

In our conversation, we came across the fact that our social workers handle more than two hundred cases each, while their European colleagues handle up to thirty, so it shouldn’t be surprising that the work proceeds very slowly. The pace of work imposed on these workers is illustrated by this information: when they went on strike, the centre’s workers didn’t simultaneously stop working, but instead took on cases from the minimum service requirements to which they can now devote attention in the way they should truly be able to. The slowness, therefore, isn’t just a matter of system inertia, but simple numbers – 227 workers in this sector per ten thousand inhabitants in northern countries compared to 0.1 workers in Serbia. Therefore, by population, northern countries have 2,270 (in words: two thousand two hundred and seventy) times more social workers than Serbia. Many things should now be clearer.

However, the PR problem is substantially contributed to by the blunders that have occurred in recent months: we recall only the scandal from two years ago involving fraud with financial assistance, the scandal of locking up social protection service workers, and the fire in which several people perished in Barajevo – all cases for which we still don’t have adequate resolutions, so they’re left to the media for various interpretations and sensationalist exploitation. Something, therefore, is rotten, and no “PR” in itself will solve that – the conclusion is simple, our social workers are simply overwhelmed and very poorly paid.

Let’s return to the strike, because perhaps these are all phenomena, but at the root, again, are the workers.

The demands could be simply summarised as elementary improvement of working conditions. Among them, of course, and somewhat more specifically – are wage increases because current wages are significantly below the city average (payment of holiday allowance, meal allowance and transport costs is also demanded – which employees in these institutions do not receive); reduction of workload – the Belgrade Social Work Centre processes more than 40% of all cases in Serbia, and due to the sheer number, the workforce is seriously undercapacitated. And just to remind you: in Europe, workers in similar positions handle about thirty cases – in Serbia, one worker may handle up to 250 cases.

But there are also some more specific demands: forming a working group that would address the problem of public perception of the social work service; introduction of official identification – because these workers are very often targets of attacks and, although they have the status of official persons, they don’t simultaneously have official identification; finally introducing work standards; modifications to the SOZIS programme, which, due to outdated computers in the centres, is completely unusable (and our interviewee also informed us that it seems this programme was created by someone who had no practical work experience and doesn’t at all meet the needs of workers). And to add at the end that one of the demands is basic maintenance of the centre premises where, as we learn from our interviewee, even mice are scurrying about.

The strikers’ demands are being responded to somehow occasionally, irregularly and as needed: of the four responsible institutions – which is again, in itself one of the problems – one has never responded (Ministry of Labour and Employment), one has responded occasionally (the City) and one has responded relatively regularly (Ministry for Family Care) and the fourth (director of the City Social Work Centre) is effectively blocked because his decisions depend on decisions from the ministries. But, as all four institutions are responsible for these centres – the problem will not be solved with the participation of just one party.

Moreover, our interviewee tells us that people who simply don’t adequately understand the situation have been coming to the negotiations – which is probably a sufficient indicator.

In the absence of real negotiations – mediation has been proposed, that is, peaceful resolution of collective labour disputes, but it hasn’t yielded too many results so far.

At the same time, the responsible institutions have actually – as in education, we recall – decided to hit the wallet, so workers initially did not receive salaries for February, or rather received reduced amounts for the period spent on strike (however, the outstanding amount was eventually paid – only after pressure and inquiries were sent). But also because of one more thing: as they don’t have work standards, it cannot be determined what is and what isn’t fulfilling the minimum service requirement – so the matter should be viewed from that angle as well. After all, emergency cases are, no matter how you look at it, something that must be dealt with, and the overcrowding is such that our interviewee pointed out that, as far as the workers are concerned, no work stoppage is even felt – due to the simple number of emergency cases that must be handled.

But one more thing remains interesting to me: we particularly dwelled on commenting on the scandalous latest information about alleged cases of abuse of social work centres which, it seems, confirm previously expressed suspicions in the media. Thus, we come to the meeting point of politics, economics and social movements: do we want a freer society and dignity for individuals – even when they are the most vulnerable members of society? If we do, let’s support the workers of social work centres.

Stefan Aleksić

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