SDP’s List of Companies Violating Work Rights

At today’s press conference, SDP has revealed a list of companies in which working rights are most violated.

More than 50,000 employees in Croatia do not receive their salary regularly, more than 150,000 are not registered to the full salary, and 250,000 do not receive overtime benefits. The rights of young, highly educated people in private companies are threatened. This is the result of the SDP’s telephone survey on human rights, which was carried out on 2,691 participants in December last year.

New measures were announced for boosting working rights

Presenting the survey results at today’s press conference, the members of the Executive Committee of SDP, Damir Gasparovic and Arsen Bauk, announced new measures for enhancing workers' rights, which SDP would soon recommend. Ana Sicenica, a former employee in ‘Dom interijer', testified about that problem. The former employer had her workbook withheld even after the notice of termination.

-Non-payment of salaries has to be a criminal act, as well as withholding a workbook after the notice of termination. We will demand for more labour inspectors and accessibility to data on tax and contributions payment. That means that every citizen would be able to check his own status in the database at any time – said Damir Gasparovic to Javno.hr.

More than 500 employees called, 250 notified companies

Damir Gasparovic talked about the most frequent problems reported in the last months to the free phone 0800 05 12, SDP’s phone for employees. More than 500 calls and 250 reported companies in which working rights were violated, testifies about a big problem in conducting the guaranteed workers' rights. A list of 50 companies in which workers' rights are violated most frequently will be sent to the State Inspector’s Office, the Tax Department and other authorities in charge.

Employees complaint about 14 hours of overtime

Employees complained about 14 hours of work a day, not paying overtime hours, salary delay,  hard conditions at work and mobbing. In some companies right of recourse and bonus for Christmas are abolished, social security and pension contribution are not paid and severance pays are very low. Employers do not want to give workbooks back; salaries are paid in building materials, and there was a case where the firm or employees were not registered.

-The worst situation is in sales, and we got complaints about all shopping centres, as well as in construction. I think that the laws and the measures we would like to introduce would press employers to be more correct – said Damir Gasparovic.

A radical change and measures which would help to stop violating workers' rights is what we need the most at this moment, and it would be a great help, said Gasparovic.