The entrance to the factory was blocked yesterday by disgruntled local hauliers who fear that they will lose jobs after the Slovene company Viator&Vektor took over the factory's transport unit.
The unionists asked the premier to see that "judicial authorities punish all those who, for no reason and without authorisation, prevented TLK workers from exercising their right to work and thus caused huge damage to the factory."
The unionists also asked the government to say whether the sale of the transport unit was carried out in line with the law or not.
The factory CEO Ivo Kostan was quoted by a local radio station as saying that the blockade prevented the delivery of goods worth seven million euros to the plant, which could have immeasurable consequences.
Some twenty road hauliers from Sibenik and Split on Thursday blocked with their trucks the main entrance to the Light Metal Factory (TLM) in Sibenik, protesting against the sale of the factory's transport unit to the Slovene company Viator&Vektor, which on the same day officially took over the transport unit.
The sale contract gives the Slovene company the exclusive right to transport the factory's products.
A spokesman for the hauliers from Sibenik, Zoran Cevid, said the protest was staged spontaneously because local hauliers feared that they would no longer be hired for transport jobs. The representative of road hauliers at the Croatian Chamber of the Economy, Ivan Knezovic, said that Croatian road hauliers would go on a general strike on September 5, which he said would completely block the transport of goods into and out of the country.
The Slovene company issued a press release on Friday, saying that it had met all contractual obligations including the ensuring of bank guarantees of two million euros, the purchase of the real estate and the ensuring of funds for salaries for all 58 employees who were promised jobs over the next three years.
Viator&Vektor said that it also assumed an obligation of cooperating with local hauliers and it already informed representatives of hauliers at meetings in Zagreb on 30 August and in Sibenik on 31 August.
The Slovene company dismissed speculations that local hauliers would lose jobs. "Quite contrary, we pledge to cooperate with them," said the director of the Viator&Vektor Zagreb branch, Ivan Vidakovic.