ZAGREB, December 3, 2018 – Economy, Entrepreneurship and Crafts Minister Darko Horvat said on Monday that the strike at Uljanik shouldn’t have been launched once again and although it was the legitimate right of workers to strike, that industrial action would not solve the problems of the dock.
“In my opinion, this strike shouldn’t have occurred. Despite the full and legitimate right of every worker to strike, I think that the strike won’t solve Uljanik’s problem,” Horvat told reporters on the margins of an award ceremony for the best small and medium-sized entrepreneurs in 2018, organised by the Večernji List and Poslovni Dnevnik dailies.
Workers at the Pula-based dock started striking again on Monday and the head of the strike committee, Boris Cerovac, said that they were compelled to do so because workers haven’t been given any positive signal from the management board and that a meeting with Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and Economy Minister Darko Horvat had not been held.
Asked to comment on the new strike at the dock, Minister Horvat said that unlike Cerovac whom the minister criticised for passing the buck from Pula to Zagreb, he wouldn’t do that too.
Horvat added that for some time now he had been trying “to find a strategic partner that will invest in shipyards together with the government.”
Alongside everything that the state has done for Uljanik and its workers this year, this type of pressure by the union, primarily Cerovac, is putting on the government “isn’t regular nor fair,” Horvat said.
He reiterated that problems exist but that at the moment, unlike other stakeholders in that dispute, he is looking for real strategic partners who have the financial ability to support the restructuring, he said.
Asked by reporters whether he was any closer to finding a strategic partner and what was about Danko Končar, the minister said that at the moment the government and ministry were not conducting talks with Končar.
For more on the Uljanik shipyard crisis, click here.
