When they exhaust the severance payments received from their companies after becoming redundant, such workers are left to fend for themselves!
Although they have households and families to support, the state has not provided any assistance for these workers, aside from one year of unemployment benefits from the National Employment Service.
The benefit amounts to just over 16,000 dinars, which is significantly lower than the value of the average consumer basket (around 50,000 dinars). According to legal regulations, it can only be paid for one year. What happens after that?
This is a question Milica Dobrić (43), a former worker at Kragujevac’s Fiat factory, often asked herself. She, along with 1,300 of her colleagues, lost their jobs this August.
As a single mother of two school-age sons, she refused to spend her time sitting at home. She began searching for jobs through classifieds and started ironing clothes and cleaning other people’s apartments.
“I’m not ashamed to do it. I need money to prepare my two sons for school and secure firewood for the winter,” she emphasizes.
Although some might think, “Well, all laid-off workers should find new jobs,” it’s not that simple. Most employers, whether in private or public companies, prioritize hiring young job seekers, while those who are older are ignored. They face a form of age discrimination as the state offers them no opportunities for new jobs or further education.
The only jobs available in classifieds for them are the hardest and lowest-paid, which none of the younger unemployed are interested in.
To make matters worse, some former employees didn’t even receive severance payments from their previous companies. This happened to Dragan Todorović from Pančevo after working for twenty years in a local private company.
“I tried to find work in my field again but was unsuccessful. In every company I interviewed at, there were mainly young people alongside me, and employers always chose them. I had no chance,” Dragan emphasizes.
He adds that it was particularly absurd that he had to plead with the director of the company where he was let go to state in his termination explanation that he lost his job due to poor performance. He was forced to do so because only with such a justification could he qualify for one year of unemployment benefits!
Dragan says he continues to search for work but now applies only for the hardest and lowest-paid jobs, the ones no young people are interested in.
“It’s better than nothing. Any job, even poorly paid, is better than no job at all,” he concludes with resignation.