How long will the dissatisfaction that left the capital without ground transport continue? Will the unions give in and end the protest? The chairman of the "Podkrepa" trade union in the Sofia Electric Transport Georgi Panayotov and the chairman of the Federation of Transport Unions at the CITUB Alexander Shopov commented on the topic in the studio of “Hello, Bulgaria”.
The representatives of the unions apologized to all Sofia residents for the inconvenience caused, but emphasized that the protest is a “higher form of democracy”. Shopov explained that they had repeatedly warned the Sofia Municipality during meetings that a similar development of the situation would occur due to the accumulated tension among public transport employees.
„We hope that there will be a meeting with the Sofia Municipality before noon. We will not wait for Monday. We have been holding talks since last night and are trying to arrange a meeting. Monday is too late”, the unionist from the Confederation of Bulgarian Trade Unions (CITUB) was categorical. He added that if the meeting with representatives of the Sofia Municipality is on Monday - there will be no ground public transport until then.
Panayotov explained that the basic salary of the taxi drivers, trolleybus drivers and electric bus drivers is 2105 leva. He emphasized that the amounts that are being speculated in society - in the order of over 4,000 leva in some cases - are received after 80 hours of overtime and a long "class of service".
The trade unionists pointed out that overtime is a lot in the capital's public transport. "Over 40% of the staff is of pre-retirement age. It is normal for people to have 25-30-35 years of work experience", explained Shopov.