Workers at a Chinese-owned copper mine in eastern Serbia held a protest on January 12 to demand higher wages and improved working conditions.
Several hundred workers at Zijin Bor Copper, located in the town of Bor, participated in the protest, calling for the Chinese company to respect the laws of Serbia and its Serbian workers.
Protester Srecko Karadzic told RFE/RL that he took part because of working conditions and because wages have not kept up with inflation.
"Insufficient respect for workers, insufficient respect for wages and standards,” he said. “Everything is more expensive, and wages are the same."
Goran Nikolic, who also works at Zijin, told RFE/RL that the workers are intimidated and said there are lists of workers who protest. These workers are then transferred to other workplaces, making others afraid, he said.
Zijin did not respond to RFE/RL’s questions about the demands of the workers and the claims about the existence of lists of protesting workers.
The company said in a statement last month that salaries are increased when there is an opportunity for it. It also released information about wages indicating the average salary at the mine is commensurate with the average salary in Serbia.
Negotiations between the management of Zijin and the trade unions on a collective agreement, which establishes the rights of workers and trade unions, have been ongoing since the beginning of 2021.
One of the sticking points is management’s adoption of the Labor Rulebook without the consent of the trade unions.
Caslav Gavric of the trade union Nezavisnost (Independence) told RFE/RL that the document is not in the interest of the workers. Gavric also said that the unions filed a lawsuit for the annulment of the rulebook.
Ivan Jankovic, a deputy of the Serbian minister of mining and energy, told RFE/RL that the ministry is involved in the negotiations.
"It is very important that we have an understanding and a partnership relationship from all sides, and this is what will enable us to solve the problems related to the collective agreement, and later to the Labor Rulebook. Just to be clear, the Labor Rulebook was created after the collective agreement expired, so we are actually talking about one document," he said.
Zijin mines copper, gold, and other ores in Serbia. The Chinese company Zijin Mining took over the state-owned company in Bor in 2018.
The company has on several occasions faced court proceedings and accusations of environmental pollution in eastern Serbia.