The conference focusing on experiences in trade unions' activities and what unionists called "Deutsche Telekom's inhumane treatment of workers in Croatia" has pooled 30 unionists from Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia-Montenegro, Austria and Germany.
Addressing a press conference on Friday, Croatian unionist Jadranko Vehar said the goal of the conference was to continue with joint activities aimed at protecting workers' rights in the said countries.
Vehar said that the "great conquerors" of markets in Central and Eastern Europe were behaving like colonisers, and that "workers had expected social dialogue and the respect for international conventions, but they got a bitter taste of the arrival of the crudest capitalism".
Vehar said that with the arrival of the DT in Croatian Telecom (HT), the number of the company's employees was cut by about 4,000. He added that the future of the remaining 6,500 workers was uncertain.
He said that with the arrival of the DT in Slovakia and Hungary thousands of workers were laid off.
Vehar went on to say that the experiences of DT workers in Germany were good, but that the DT did not apply the same criteria on Croatian employees, and accused that multinational company of violating Croatian laws.