SMH leader Vedran Dragicevic told a news conference in the coastal city of Split on Monday that all trade unions operating in those two shipyards were conducting talks on staging the protest rally. The date of the action will be fixed later.
"We aim to clearly tell the government that we will not allow the shut-down of the shipyards," Dragicevic said, adding that the protest rally would also send a message to Europe not to resort to blackmail to close down Croatian shipyards.
The dissatisfaction of the shipyards' workers has been triggered off by a recent document from the European Commission with benchmarks for the provisional closing of the Competition Policy chapter within Croatia's European Union accession negotiations.
Dragicevic said that "it is not the restructuring of the Croatian shipbuilding industry but the adoption of programmes on the restructuring of the shipbuilding industry which stands as a condition for Croatia's admission to the EU."
He pointed to the requirement that shipyards cannot conclude new deals before overhauling programmes are adopted by the Croatian Competition Agency and the European Commission.
"Such an approach creates room for closing the shipyard in Split which will complete the building of three or four ships in the next two or three months. Consequently, workers will be laid off," the unionist said, warning that "a huge danger is looming over" the Split shipyard.
Therefore he urged the government to commission two ships in that yard, enabling employees to have jobs over the next year. The government can later sell those ships and get back the money invested, he said.