ZAGREB, 27 Aug 2021 - Only one in ten people who have found a job this year have been given permanent work contracts while 90% have found short or fixed-term jobs, Večernji List daily said on Friday, noting that despite the crisis, 2021 saw the fewest dismissals so far.

With the present share of insecure and short-term work Croatia has been holding the European record for years. In the first seven months of 2021 permanent work contracts were signed by slightly less than 9,500 previously employed persons while 83,000 signed fixed-term contracts, the daily says.

Labour market fluctuations are common but mass-scale hiring based on fixed-term employment contracts, followed by dismissals, has been a constant in Croatia for the past 20 years or so.

In 2019 and 2020 around 120,000 workers were hired on a fixed-term basis annually, and some of them probably signed such contracts with the same employer more than one time. Around 100,000 annually re-registered with the employment service, where they waited for another opportunity.

The seasonal character of Croatia's economy is determined by employment in tourism and the related services but fixed-term employment is present also in all other sectors. The prevalence of short-term employment has only been partially alleviated by high government incentives to businesses that sign fixed-term employment contracts with persons under 30.

Since 2015 the state has offered five-year exemption from the payment of wage contributions to businesses that give young people permanent work contracts. These incentives are currently paid for around 150,000 young people, of whom only about 20,000 were given permanent work contracts right away.

Even though this is a strong financial intervention, it has lowered the previous share of fixed-term contracts in the total number of new contracts from 95 to 90%, which bears evidence of the complexity of the problem of short-term hiring.

The number of workers who were declared redundant in the first seven months of 2021 is similar to the same period of 2019 but it is much lower than in 2020. Apart from workers who were declared redundant, another 900 workers were fired because their employers ceased operating, which is a significantly lower number than in the past two years, the daily says.

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ZAGREB, 13 Aug 2021 - The Croatian Journalists' Association (HND) and the Croatian Journalists' Trade Union (SNH) on Friday condemned the decision of the owner of the Televizija Šibenik on the extraordinary dismissal without prior notice of two journalists and a television camera operator.

Addressing a news conference the HND leader Hrvoje Zovko said that journalists were "fed up with local power-mongers who tailor local media coverage" and compared the case of TV Šibenik with the recent developments in the Pula-based Glas Istre newspaper in which some reporters were fired.

Zovko strongly condemned the move of the TV Šibenik owner Stipe Grcić to bar one of the dismissed reporters -- Lucija Cvitan -- from entering the broadcaster's premises, and pointed out a label put on the door of the editorial room reading that Cvitan is "a persona non grata".

Zovko and Cvitan told today's news conference that this label was particularly disparaging and the European Federation of Journalists would be informed of this action of the media outlet's owner, if he failed to remove it immediately.

The HND chief said that the actions of Grcić and the TV Šibenik were scandalous, particularly having in mind the fact that the media outlet was partly funded from the state budget.

Zovko added that they had sent a request to Grcić last night to give his comment on the case but he had not sent any response until the start of the news conference.

Cvitan said that before being sacked she had not received any notice. I sent an e-mail asking or amending my employment contract for June. The reply sent after that was that I was no longer an employee of the TV Šibenik, she said adding that after that the disparaging label appeared on the editorial room.

"I want the stain to be removed from my name. I have have worked conscientiously," said Cvitan.

The other sacked reporter, Ivana Bulat, was fired during her sick leave.

The SNH leader Maja Sever said that the key to such problems appearing in local media outlets would be the conclusion of collective agreements regulating all the rights and entitlements of journalists.

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