PPS Group Detva Pledges to Pay Salary Bonuses to Avert Strike

Detva, January 28 (TASR) – Engineering company PPS Group Detva (Banska Bystrica region) on Thursday announced that will pay performance bonuses to all employees – as early as on the same day, in an attempt to avert a strike at the factory as of February 1.

Nevertheless, the trade union doesn’t believe that a PPS Group press release is a relevant reason for scrapping the planned strike, said KOVO Podpolianske Strojarne trade union chairman Stanislav Luptak.

As many as 840 out of 969 PPS Group employees have put their signatures to the strike announcement.

According to Luptak, speaking at a press conference on Thursday along with another 15 trade unionists, the union has held several talks with the PPS Group management in the past few days, but it hasn’t received any guarantee that the bonuses will actually be paid. So, the unions demand that the official salary accounts for December should be changed or a legally binding document guaranteeing the payment of December bonuses released. This could take several days, however, said Luptak.

PPS Group spokesman Lubos Schwarzbacher in a written statement provided to TASR claimed that the company will pay out the bonuses, as certain liabilities have been paid by its business partners.

“We continue to maintain that employees can’t claim the right to performance bonuses for December 2015, when the company was in the red. The decision not to pay the bonuses along with ordinary salaries on the normal payment date was made following proper consideration and based on negative economic results for the previous month,” reads the company’s statement.