The disgruntled reporters held a news conference in the Croatian Journalists' Association (HND) offices at which the heads of the HND and the Croatian Journalists' Union, Zdenko Duka and Gabrijela Galic respectively, expressed support for the strike.
They called on other reporters to show solidarity with Vecernji List reporters and join them in a protest march on Friday, when they will walk from the HND headquarters to the offices of the Vecernji List company. They also called on readers not to buy the paper during the strike.
The trade union steward in Vecernji List, Anton Filic, told the news conference that the first collective agreement had been concluded in Vecernji List in 1996, and that the rights stemming from that agreement were now being cancelled or drastically restricted following an order from the newspaper's owner, the Austrian Styria company.
Filic urged part-time employees in the newspaper to join in the strike despite the fact that they may face the risk of being sacked due to "their undefined status."
"I urge all readers to cease buying Vecernji List as of Thursday, as it will no longer be a newspaper made by reporters but a lower-value alternative," he said.
The head of the editorial staff council, Marinko Jurasic, said that the cause for which Vecernji List reporters were fighting was not only their acquired rights but also media freedom.
Jurasic said that the violation of the collective agreement was not restricted to this newspaper but was a problem of the entire journalistic profession in Croatia.
He warned against depriving 120 part-time journalists of their rights, adding that the management was exploiting their position to restrict the strike. There are 120 part-time reporters as against 102 permanently employed ones in Vecernji List.
Jurasic also dismissed as malicious claims that Vecernji List journalists are going on strike despite high salaries.
Croatian Journalists' Union president Galic joined in the assessment that the industrial action in Vecernji List was also the struggle for media freedom and fundamental social and economic rights of journalists.
HND leader Duka said that the international and European federations of journalists had supported the cause of Vecernji List workers and the struggle against double standards of the Styria management which he said gave some rights to Austrian reporters but denied them to Croatians.
The disgruntled reporters also sent an open letter to Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor notifying her that they would go on strike on Wednesday due to the termination of the collective agreement.
They called on Kosor to continue campaigning against corruption and the grey economy also in media companies.
"Media publishers and politicians have been making trade-offs for years to the detriment of journalists," they said in the letter.
Recalling that Kosor used to be a reporter, they said that she must be aware that "there is no democratic state without free media" and that the restriction of their labour rights would affect the freedom of journalism.