"This shows that we will succeed despite the overly rigid Referendum Act. We will succeed in what no one in Croatia has succeeded until now and I'm confident that we will negotiate at the table a Labour Act custom-made for Croatian workers, at the expense of tycoons and the army of entrepreneurs who became rich by making Croatia poor," said Matijasevic, who is also the coordinator of union federations collecting the referendum signatures.

He said the unions would return to the negotiating table as soon as the signatures were collected.

If the "other side" is reasonable and listens to Croatian citizens, agreement is possible, otherwise it "will have a referendum, which will be a clear sign that the Croatian people does not want this government and this type of governing," he said.

Commenting on yesterday's agreement between the government and the majority of government employees' unions to pay them holiday cash grants and children's gifts but not Christmas bonuses this year, Matijasevic said it proved that the government should have negotiated like that with all unions whose members are government employees, instead of embarking on rigid Labour Act amendments because "its negotiators are incompetent".

The president of the Vukovar-Srijem County Farmers' Association, Tomislav Pokrovac, supported the unionists, saying that collecting signatures was the only way in which workers could exercise their rights.

He said farmers did not want incentives from workers' pockets, only to have their product appropriately paid and on time. He called on farmers and unionists to unite for a better and more equitable Croatia.