The Croatian Journalists Association (HND) warned the public and all relevant state bodies on Sunday that the situation in Vecernji List daily is illegal since, despite the fact that about 80 per cent of its permanently employed journalists are on strike, the newspaper is issued every day which, according to the HND, leads to the conclusion that modern media managers do not need professional journalists to make a newspaper and that they are just an unnecessary cost.
"The newspaper is being made by those with a temporary work contract or even without it, who are blackmailed anyway, as they have no social rights whatsoever and if they refuse an assignment, the managers will get rid of them at once. This is a question of hidden employment and not of what is meant by a temporary work contract," the HND said in a press release.
It added that this is "ideal for media owners and their managers - no collective agreement, no 'burden' of the permanently employed, no social and legal obligations, a daily fluctuation of labour as the bosses wish, but without the need to address the public."
The HND said "a newspaper without professional journalists cannot satisfy the general social interest that the media should have in the democracy of a society, the supervision of political and all other institutions, culture and the spiritual well-being of citizens."
The HND recalled that Styria's chairman of the board in Croatia, Boris Trupcevic, once said that "'it is not the function of the media to encourage thinking'. This is in keeping with what is going on now."
The Austrian company Styria is the owner of Vecernji List.
The HND said the events in Vecernji could have far-reaching consequences for all media in Croatia and relations between owners, editors and journalists. "Croatian journalism will be subjugated."
The HND once again called on Vecernji List's management to invite the striking journalists to resume collective bargaining so that the strike could end.
It said it would closely watch the outcome of negotiations between the Croatian journalists' trade union and the association of press publishers on a national collective agreement for journalists.
The HND said there were many cases of lawlessness in the media, as no one oversaw the application of the obsolete Media Act, and that if this lawlessness was not stopped immediately, the HND would be forced to ask for the reopening of negotiations on the policy chapter regulating press freedoms in Croatia's entry talks with the European Union.
![[FOTO] Stručni žiri proglasio Rimca gospodarstvenikom godine, čitatelji titulom ovjenčali još jednog hrvatskog poslovnjaka](/media/thumbnail/500x300/1601001.jpeg?cropId=0)
