VUKOVAR, Jan 14 (Hina) - Non-assigned workers of Vukovar's footwear factory "Borovo" on Tuesday requested the parliament to include in the agenda of its next sitting a debate on contract termination notices which 2,320 workers were to
be handed at the beginning of this year. The workers have not been actively employed since mid-1991, but the company has been paying their pension and health insurance contributions.
VUKOVAR, Jan 14 (Hina) - Non-assigned workers of Vukovar's footwear
factory "Borovo" on Tuesday requested the parliament to include in
the agenda of its next sitting a debate on contract termination
notices which 2,320 workers were to be handed at the beginning of
this year. The workers have not been actively employed since mid-
1991, but the company has been paying their pension and health
insurance contributions. #L#
Some 500 workers gathered today for a meeting in the Vukovar suburb
of Borovo Naselje, at the invitation of a committee in charge of
protecting the Borovo workers' rights and the Croatian Returnees
Association (ZPH). Conclusions adopted at the meeting were
presented by ZPH president Josip Kompanovic.
The workers demand that their status be discussed in parliament and
that parliament bind the government to solve the situation in the
company the way it did in VUPIK and Belje agricultural plants.
The employees of VUPIK and Belje were given severance pays
amounting to 3,000 kuna for each year of service, Kompanovic said,
adding that otherwise, Borovo's employees would seek their rights
by staging a protest in front of the government and parliament
buildings in Zagreb.
Kompanovic accused Slavko Linic, a Vice-Premier and chairman of the
administrative board of the Croatian Privatisation Fund (HFP),
which owns Borovo, of applying different standards in settling
problems in Borovo and companies in the Rijeka area, including
Rijecka Bank and the Viktor Lenac shipyard.
The ZPH leader also condemned a decision by the HFP, signed by
Linic, according to which some of Borovo's immovable assets and 30
hectares of construction land are to be leased free of charge to the
Fund for the Reconstruction and Development of Vukovar for the
establishment of a free zone. He reminded that the factory's
management had suggested leasing its land and other immovable
assets for a fee, which would be used to pay surplus workers'
severance pays and the factory's obligations towards pension and
health insurance funds.
The Labour Act should be applied in the same way in Zagreb, Rijeka
and Vukovar, said the Croatian Federation of Independent Workers'
Unions' co-ordinator for the Danube region, Milivoj Susa.
Liberal Party leader and MP Zlatko Kramaric, who attended the
meeting along with Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) deputies
Jadranka Kosor, Vladimir Seks and Juraj Njavro, said there should
be no double standards in the solution of the same issues.
The LS will not be able to support the ruling coalition if problems
are solved this way, Kramaric said.
Kosor said that her party's bench in parliament would request that
parliament discuss not only the dismissal of Borovo's employees but
the quality of life of people living in areas of special state
concern in general.
The workers who are to be laid off are part of a group of some 7,000
workers who in 1991 were expelled from Vukovar along with other
Croats and non-Serbs. By the end of 2002, solutions were found for
4,700 workers by transferring them to other companies, sending them
into retirement or employing them in Borovo's newly-established
daughter firms. As funds for pension and health insurance for the
remaining 2,320 workers were lacking, the company had to announce
the termination of their work contracts.
(hina) rml