As announced, tomorrow, Monday, there will be a day-long strike at RTV Slovenija, and there is no end to the tension. The management of RTV Slovenia offered the strikers the possibility of mediation by the journalists’ union of RTV Slovenia, but they refused. Despite the fact that the strike is a constitutional right, the management announced that it will be carried out in accordance with the law, so according to N1, the journalists warned that the management will guarantee them only basic rights from the employment relationship, but not personal income, for the duration of the strike. And because that was not enough, for additional excitement, the authors of Utrip show launched a modified plan.
This means that a strike is an organised interruption of work at a workplace. The employer of the strikers cannot and will not obstruct the strike, but this does not mean that the strikers can disturb or hinder the employees who are doing their work during the strike. In accordance with the above, the general management has already informed all employees of the most urgent information and instructions that apply during the strike, but of course this was not to the journalists’ liking, which only further increased tensions.
As Helena Milinković from the Coordination of Journalists’ Unions announced on Twitter, on Monday, September 26th, the majority of programme creators on Television Slovenia will go on strike, so the programme will be changed. All news programmes, including TV Dnevnik and Odmevi, as well as programmes about sports and culture, will be “blacked out” on this day, the same will happen on MMC websites, and in other programmes on radio stations and regional centres, the content will be adapted to the strike. The entertainment programme will play reruns of the shows. They will go on strike at the workplaces, in the editorial offices of the Informative Programme, MMC, sports, culture and entertainment, and they will perform a minimum of public service on this day. Given their behaviour over the past few weeks and no concrete reasons given for the strike, many people on Twitter have joked about it.
The tension before the strike at RTV is growing, the Coordination of Journalists’ Unions of RTVS already warned two weeks ago that the management of the public service is escalating pressure and threats with disciplinary procedures against the journalists there, but they did not condemn the left-wing actions that were publicly carried out on television, and the facts, that some journalists simply did not come to work during working hours. Although the management offered them the option of mediation, they still decided to reject it and to keep the strike.
