Inspection on site in Sarajevo Canton, employees must be paid for working on holidays

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - In Sarajevo Canton, inspection supervision of employers has been intensified for those for whom January 2 and 3, 2022, were working days, even though these days were declared non-working days by the Government of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina due to the celebration of the New Year.

- Supervised employers will be instructed in writing to submit January payrolls to inspectors no later than the end of February 2022, on which employees will have their right to increased wages for working on Sunday and Monday (January 2 and 3) recorded and recognized, while failure to comply with the aforementioned written measure will result in financial sanctions prescribed by the Labor Law. These range from 1,000 to 3,000 KM for legal entities, and from 2,000 to 5,000 KM for responsible persons within legal entities, which is also the penalty for employers who are natural persons – stated Vildana Brdarić, spokesperson for the Cantonal Administration for Inspection Affairs of Sarajevo Canton.

The focus of the labor inspection, as they emphasized, is on supervising shops, shopping malls, retail chains, and caterers, with the note that violations of the aforementioned legal provisions can also be reported to this authority later, after which an inspection will be carried out for each report, and the reporter will be informed of the established factual situation.

- We remind that Bosnia and Herzegovina does not have a law on state holidays; instead, holidays are declared non-working days by the Decision of the FBiH Government, while no financial sanctions are prescribed for violating these decisions.

Precisely such a legal provision does not give labor inspectors the opportunity to prohibit employers from working on holidays, but exclusively to control the application of Article 76 of the Labor Law, which obliges employers to increase wages for working on a holiday or any other day for which it is legally determined that work is not performed.