ZAGREB, Jan 8 (Hina) - The Independent Union of Science and Higher Education has expressed "consternation" over a meeting announced for Friday between Deputy Prime Minister Andrija Hebrang and representatives of the Croatian
Physicians Union (HLS), which it claims breaches long-standing procedural and democratic customs.
ZAGREB, Jan 8 (Hina) - The Independent Union of Science and Higher
Education has expressed "consternation" over a meeting announced for
Friday between Deputy Prime Minister Andrija Hebrang and
representatives of the Croatian Physicians Union (HLS), which it
claims breaches long-standing procedural and democratic customs.#L#
With that meeting the government is starting negotiations with one of
the health workers unions before starting talks with negotiating
committees of all state and public workers unions, the Independent
Union of Science and Higher Education said in a statement on
Thursday.
The government is bound to start negotiations with negotiating
committees of all state and public workers unions under collective
agreements that have been signed and commitments towards social
partnership. The HLS has not signed any one agreement.
The aforementioned committees represent 200,000 of all employed
persons, while the HLS represents only several thousand people from
one branch.
Hebrang's announcement of the start of negotiations with the HLS about
a collective agreement constitutes the "destruction of the entire
system of collective negotiating" which has been painstakingly built
in democratic Croatia for 12 years, the Independent Union of Science
and Higher Education said, adding that this was contrary to the
principle on which Croatian labour legislation was founded.
"We would like the government to meet the Physicians Union's demand
for a 45-percent pay rise as that would certainly entail higher
salaries for scientists, top artists and other creative and expert
people in public services and state administration," read the
statement.
"We wouldn't like to believe that Hebrang is protecting the guild he
is coming from and thus favouring narrow, partial interests to the
detriment of overall interests, or that (his announcement) constitutes
the settlement of the political debt to the HLS which joined with its
strike in political campaigns... in the country."
"We wonder if Hebrang will settle that debt by ensuring 45-percent
higher salaries only for physicians or will ensure that for other
professions in the country as well, or for no one at all," the
statement concluded.
(Hina) ha sb