ZAGREB, October 10, 2018 - The NHS trade union federation welcome the announced revocation of the measure whereby employers who have paid minimum wages to employees have been freed of the obligation to pay 50% of contributions, and the unions find that measure to have been just an encouragement to employers to give minimum wages to more and more workers.
NHS leader Krešimir Sever has said that the implementation of that measure that frees employers of full contribution payment in the case of minimum wages has proven to be a bad measure.
He has said that it would be good to try to have as fewer minimum wages as possible and to ensure higher pay for workers.
According to some informal reports, employers will be obliged to pay 75% of contributions for minimum monthly salaries as of the start of 2019, whereas now they pay 50% of contributions in that case. As of 2020, this will rise to full contribution.
The unionist says that employers should be helped to solve many problems they encounter but they should also be encouraged to provide a decent pay to their employees.
On the other hand, the Croatian Employers' Association finds the measure of the 50% payment of contributions for minimum wages to be a good measure as it has been linked with contributions and insist that this measure has helped employers to increase wages to their employees on a permanent basis.
This measure has been used so far in the labour-intensive sector that employs lowly-educated workers. Minimum wages are mainly paid in clothes and footwear industries, the wood-processing sector and in security companies.
