As Novac/Gordana Grgas writes on the 21st of October, 2020, Croatian employers have generally voiced their satisfaction with the announced redesigned Government measures, but HUP warns that labour costs are not the only operating costs, business liquidity for many industries is still seriously jeopardised and that a drop in revenue of less than 40 percent could potentially mean business closure for small and medium-sized enterprises.
Hrvoje Bujas, president of the Voice of Entrepreneurs (Glas Poduzetnika) Association, therefore says that they welcome the introduction of a different modality of support for the preservation of jobs as well as increasing the possibility of reducing working hours, but they demand that the so-called covid-liquidity loans and investment loans are sped up.
“The measures adopted by the government are good for salaries, and in order for the private sector to recover, investments need to be increased. “Some companies are now changing the sectors in which they operate, switching because they have to manage,” he explains. He believes that, according to the current situation, the support measures should last at least until April next year.
Regarding the new measures to be adopted by the CES Management Board, the open question is whether the recipients of aid are allowed to give business-related dismissals. The representative of the UAS in the CES Governing Board, Ana Milicevic Pezelj, explained that their position is that this isn’t allowed and that the state must set the proper framework for that up.
“We’re not asking for Croatian employers to not be allowed to to lay off staff in a certain period after the use of these measures to preserve jobs, but not in the time of their duration, not while using them,” she emphasised. This, she added, only applies to business-related dismissals, meaning that the union is not asking for an absolute ban on lay-offs, but believes that Croatian employers “can’t have both sheep and money.”
Since September, says Ana Milicevic Pezelj, they have noticed a trend in some industries, such as tourism, to engage in business-related lay-offs to permanent employees, along with severance pay, with the announcement that they will be re-employed in the spring, but in another sense.
”This further erodes stable working conditions, and in those cases coronavirus merely serves as an excuse,” she noted. HUP said that dismissals are the last resort for Croatian employers, but given the epidemiological and economic situation, it is possible that in some companies, despite the subsidies, there will be a need to lay off a certain number of workers “so that business can be kept going at a reduced level and so they might keep at least part of their workers,”
They noted that the state co-finances salary amounts, while the employer is still obliged to pay the difference up to the full amount of salary, and that in the conditions of a prolonged crisis and significantly reduced business volume, there is a lack of income that could cover all such costs. HUP is therefore in favour of introducing a model related to percentage drops according to the size of the company, as was the case at the beginning of the introduction of measures back in March.
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