A body coordinating Croatian trade union federations said on Tuesday that according to field estimates, close to 65 percent of signatures needed for a referendum against changes to the Labour Act had been collected so far.
Unions have noted a slowing down in the growth of the number of collected signatures and therefore call on citizens to sign the petition for the referendum.
The coordinator of union federations, Ozren Matijasevic, said the slowing down of the signature-collecting drive was partly due to organisational problems.
The fast pace at which signatures were collected in the first few days might have led citizens to conclude that they don't need to sign the petition, but all citizens are welcome and their signatures are needed, Matijasevic said.
He added that at a meeting today the coordinating body of union federations did not discuss Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor's invitation to the unions on Monday to resume negotiations with the government on changes to the Labour Act, adding that it had been decided earlier that there would be no negotiations during the signature-collecting drive.
Commenting on a statement by Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) vice-president and MP Andrija Hebrang, who said that Matijasevic's telling Parliament Speaker Luka Bebic not to submit changes to labour legislation to be discussed by parliament before the completion of the signature-collecting campaign was intolerable, Matijasevic said that his goal indeed was to exert influence on the parliament and that it was normal for the parliament not to discuss a topic on which citizens were expressing their opinion.
Trade union federations on June 9 launched a campaign to collect signatures for a referendum against changes to the Labour Act. They have until June 23 to collect around 450,000 signatures in order to initiate the procedure of calling a referendum against the government-sponsored changes to the Labour Act, which they believe will destroy the system of collective bargaining.
