The union's representative in the National Council for Safety at Work, Svjetlana Sokcevic, said the Labour Ministry had consulted neither experts nor the Council in drafting the bill.
NHS president Kresimir Sever said the government's social partners had not been consulted either and that the bill was put up for public discussion during the summer, when public interest for such topics was weak.
Sokcevic said the existing law was better than what the ministry was proposing and that it was aligned with the European Union acquis communautaire.
She said the new bill was not drafted in accordance with the methodology Croatia had developed in cooperation with the EU as part of a EUR 1.25 million project.
She said that under the bill, an employer would not commit a misdemeanour by asking a worker to co-finance safety at work or by not training him for safety at work. The employer would have the right to ask workers to work on dangerous buildings and underage workers could work on jobs with special working conditions.
Sever said the bill was currying favour with big business and represented a neo-liberal concept appropriate for Pacific countries.
Public discussion on the bill is open until September 30 and the bill should be enacted in the last quarter of the year.