New KEK Union warns mass protest

KEK employees in Kosovo will organise a protest on 7 October to express their failure to comply with the lack of salary growth and disrespect of court decisions on the part of the corporate management.

Kosovo Energy Corporation chief union Nexhat Llumnica has declared it will organise a mass protest on October 7th to voice disagreement over the absence of KEK officials' responses to their demands.

Llumnica for Debat Plus has shown some of KEK employees' main demands.

According to him, they seek salary raises, as according to him, no increase in their salaries has occurred since 2018.

He has stressed that inflation in Kosovo and the eurozone has reached about 30%, so wages must be raised to meet the workers' current needs.

Llumnica also cited one of KEK's successes, stressing a profit of 107m euros during 2022. However, according to him, this success has not been shared with KEK employees.

Our specific demands are that we have not had salary raises since 2018 for KEK workers. When it is known that inflation in Kosovo, but not only, in the eurozone is somewhere around 30 per cent, and really those who have had salaries based on KEK engineers, which is 745 euros, it now has to be covered by a thousand and 100 euros in the event it is worth equal to the wages of 2018. We have argued on the basis of inflation, but also on the basis, but also on the successes we have enjoyed during 2022, 107m euros in profits, and this success has not been shared with KEK workers”, he stated.

KEK workers, as Llumnica has shown, say the labour market has changed and they can get higher salaries in the private sector for the same job.

The Kosovo labour market has changed, KEK workers for the same job can get much more pay in the private sector. The average salary at KEK, the basic salary I'm talking about is not what it should do 400 hours a month as a result of lack of workers, but the average wage is 627 euros, and that in the private sector could be 1,000 and more Euro”, he said.

Llumnica has added that they have been conducting KEK management, but they have not produced concrete results.

Their argument is that they dare not give these payments because no one gives them to Kosovo, but we have won them with the Supreme Court, with the Court of Appeals, which KEK law office officials have taken to the Constitutional Court”, Llumnica has declared.