ZAGREB, Jan 25 (Hina) - The Croatian government adopted draft amendments to a final labour bill at a closed-door session on Thursday, the government's public relations office said. The amendments enable the signing of part-time work
contracts for permanent seasonal jobs; they regulate the commitment to appoint a worker to the supervisory committees of companies in which the state holds more than 25 percent of shares or whose majority owner is the first buyer who purchased his shares at a price of less than 50 percent of their nominal value. The amendments also increase fines for employers. Experts and unions have criticised the amendments. A professor at the Zagreb Faculty of Law, Zeljko Potocnjak, believes workers should have representatives in the supervisory boards of all companies, independent of who owns those companies. He holds it inadmissible that workers' representatives be appointed also to compani
ZAGREB, Jan 25 (Hina) - The Croatian government adopted draft
amendments to a final labour bill at a closed-door session on
Thursday, the government's public relations office said.
The amendments enable the signing of part-time work contracts for
permanent seasonal jobs; they regulate the commitment to appoint a
worker to the supervisory committees of companies in which the
state holds more than 25 percent of shares or whose majority owner
is the first buyer who purchased his shares at a price of less than
50 percent of their nominal value. The amendments also increase
fines for employers.
Experts and unions have criticised the amendments. A professor at
the Zagreb Faculty of Law, Zeljko Potocnjak, believes workers
should have representatives in the supervisory boards of all
companies, independent of who owns those companies.
He holds it inadmissible that workers' representatives be
appointed also to companies whose majority owner is the first buyer
who purchased his shares at a price of less than 50 percent of their
nominal value.
"The price criterion functions here as punishing those who have
bought companies cheaply with workers' participation and that
cannot be the purpose and meaning of workers' participation,"
Potocnjak believes.
Vitomir Loncar, secretary-general of the Association of
Independent Workers Trade Unions of Croatia, believes it is
necessary to raise the level of workers' participation in decision-
making, including their participation in workers' committees.
The head of Croatia's Employers' Association, Zeljko Ivancevic,
claims, however, that workers sitting on supervisory boards is rare
even in developed countries like Germany, where this is the case
only in large companies with a large number of workers.
Introducing workers' representatives into supervisory committees
of state-owned companies can only yield negative effects.
Companies such as INA (Croatian oil industry) or HEP (Croatian
Power Industry) need restructuring, which means reducing the
number of employees, and the main task of workers' representatives
on supervisory committees will be preventing layoffs, Ivancevic
said.
(hina) rml