GOVT. TURNS DEAF EAR TO PUBLIC SERVICE UNIONS' PROTESTS

ZAGREB, July 11 (Hina) - The government has turned a deaf ear to all public service unions' protests against the salary policy, which brings into question its democratic character, a leader of the Science Union said on Wednesday, announcing the union might turn towards the opposition's Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ). No one has either resigned or been replaced over the government's omissions in the salary policy, according to Vilim Ribic. He said unions still urged the ministers of finance and health, Mato Crkvenac and Ana Stavljenic-Rukavina, and Deputy Education Minister Ivan Vavra to resign by Sept. 1. The basic democratic principles of labour legislation have been violated for the past 18 months, said Ribic. He added the government did not respect work agreements despite not having cancelled them. "In its last three years in power (pre-2000), the HDZ respected all agreements with public sector unions, while the incumbent authorities have deceived us with the very first agreement," said Ribic. He did not exclude the possibility that his union turn to the current opposition. Ribic congratulated the government on respecting the law by deciding to extradite suspected Croatian generals to UN's war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Further isolation from European trends would be disastrous for the science and higher education sector, he added. One thousand actions have been filed to date for breaches of salary provisions from work agreements, Ribic said, announcing another 3,000 this autumn for violations of the right to bonuses for regular university professors. (hina) ha sb