Three trade unions which bring together employees in the telecommunications company HT on Tuesday announced industrial action and protests against the company management following its announcement that it would lay off 684 workers.
The HT management has decided to lay off 450 workers who will be given severance packages each in the gross amount of HRK 360,000 (approx. EUR 48,000), and to cancel contracts of another 234 workers with fixed-term employment contracts.
There is no surplus labour in the HT, union leaders said, adding that the company had hired as many as 1,102 students for various jobs and that last year its workers had 112,000 overtime hours. Also, the HT is not closing down the sectors where redundant workers come from but is hiring subcontractors, they said.
The only reason for the latest wave of dismissals is greed because the HT must deliver to its owner Deutsche Telekom and other shareholders more profit than it did last year, when it made a profit of two billion kuna, the unionists said.
"We suggested a compromise solution to declare as redundant slightly fewer than 200 people, but since that suggestion was rejected, there is nothing left for us to do but start with protests and strikes," said Juko Cikojevic, leader of the Croatian Union of Workers in the Telecommunications Sector.
Cikojevic said that union leaders would most probably call on workers to stage protests on January 19 outside the HT's main offices and the German embassy in Zagreb, adding that Deutsche Telekom did not treat workers in Germany the way it treated those in Croatia.
At the time when Deutsche Telekom became its majority owner, the HT employed 11,400 workers and today it employs 5,723 workers, the union leaders said.
