Representatives of Ministry of Infrastructure, Reforms Support Office, Employment Centre, administration of the state enterprise Sea Trade Port (STP) Yuzhny, trade unions, experts and consultants have met on Tuesday in Odessa to consider the development of a draft pre-feasibility study (pre-FS) of the concession project for the sea port Yuzhny.
According to the press office of STP Yuzhny, the meeting in the round-table format came a platform for discussing strategic issues regarding retention of social guarantees for workers and forming a list of demands to contribute to attraction of an effective investor.
Taking floor, Director of Maritime and Inland Water Transport Reforming and Functioning Department, Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine, Oleksandr Basiuk noted that insufficient awareness of the stakeholders in respect of the course of FS development foster growth of tension both for the employer and the employees. Thus, the basic criteria by his opinion should become openness and transparency of all the phases of pre-concession activities.
“What it would be – a lease or concession, on what conditions, with what personnel, for what time period the enterprise to be let – these matters are still considered. There are no final decisions yet. However, we stress that nobody is concerned in a harm for the employees and limitation of the collective’s rights. Our task is to jointly develop a list of demands to the concessionaire (bringing in additional cargoes, adjustment of the initial investments number, reservation of social guarantees for every worker) in order to achieve the maximum profit, to efficiently employ capacities and depths”, underlined Mr Basiuk.
At the same time Vice Chairman of Marine Transport Workers Trade Union Valeriy Tarnavskiy noted that public ports in Ukraine work inefficiently, due to the state’s policy among others. “The enterprises are put to the edge of mere survival. If not for the today’s 75 % of net profit seized by the fisc, the ports could have developed and improved, invest in the development. Many issues are bureaucratised, as, for instance, delaying of the financial plans approval etc. All these problems solved, the public companies could have successfully work in the state enterprise format as it is”, stressed he.
Mr Tarnavskiy shared practices of the Kherson Sea Port trade unions which also work on the FS development. “The list of demands regarding the collective includes retention of the collective bargaining agreement in force for 5 years, and the moratorium on the staff reduction. Nevertheless, we don’t deny a “social parachute” like paying out annual salaries or retirement of pensioners with several monthly wages paid. We declare as obligatory the reservation of wages level as well as their re-adjustment or indexation in line with a rise of the living wage”, he specified.
The trade union leader of STP Yuzhny Serhiy Maslov took note that it was premature to speak on any changes in the company’s activity before the law on concessions is passed. “But as we already consider preliminary conditions for the FS, so trade unions should anyway take part in the discussion and perform their social functions such as retention of jobs and all the social guarantees for the port employees”, he added.
Acting Director of SE STP Yuzhny Anatoliy Yablunovskiy stressed that the enterprise on the date was self-efficient and profitable, able of investing significant amounts of its own (some 800M UAH in 2018) it its development, and equipped on 100 % by its own production entities necessary for the whole cycle of successful work. “Accordingly, the SE must be considered as an integral complex, opposite to some separate production units. It is difficult today to forecast what additional freight base could propose to bring in a potential concessionaire. We are not indifferent towards the fate of both enterprise and collective, so in the future we will put our maximum efforts to successfully realise in the port decisions taken by the Ministry, so the people could calmly work and get proper salazries”, summarised Mr Yablunovskiy.
source: https://ports.com.ua/news/v-odesse-obsudili-sotsialnye-ganatii-v-teo-kontsessii-porta-yuzhnyy