ZAGREB, 3 Sept 2021 - The process of amending the Labour Act to regulate teleworking will be initiated before the end of this year, and the amended legislation should be passed no later than August 2022, a conference on remote work was told in Split on Friday.

The conference was held within the Devote programme, which is being implemented by the Croatian Employers' Association (HUP) in cooperation with the Oil Industry Union (SING) and the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO).

"It is our duty to adjust our legislation, including the Labour Act, to the European Union's 2019 directives, and deadlines expire in August 2022," said Josipa Klišanin of the Croatian Labour Ministry.

The EU directives will have the greatest impact on contracts on teleworking enabling employees to choose their place of work in agreement with their employer, according to Klišanin.

It is a worker's workload and performance that matters and not the place where they perform their duties, she underscored.

The future amendments will introduce the protection of teleworkers, and labour inspectors will be able to visit them only if they announce their visit and have the substantive reason  for such a visit, she said.

The HUP director-general, Damir Zorić, said that the amendments should produce better regulation of remote work.

HUP's chief economist Iva Tomić said that on average, 3% of employed Croatians were teleworkers, however, during the COVID-19 pandemic this percentage had risen by 30%.

 Surveys show that an estimated 100 million people will soon be teleworking worldwide.

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ZAGREB, 23 June, 2021 - The first meeting of a task force to prepare a new Labour Act was held on Wednesday and social partners said that it was conducted peacefully without any complex issues and that it is expected that the law, which will more clearly define "remote work," among other things, should go into force mid-next year.

After months of consultation, it has been decided that a new Labour Act will be prepared, one that is appropriate to contemporary circumstances, state-secretary in the Labour Ministry Dragan Jelić said.

The act needs to introduce novelties that emerged during the pandemic, such as remote work and working from home, said Jelić.

The task force consists of the government's social partners, employers and the unions, and it is expected that a first draft bill will be completed by the year's end.

As for remote work and work from home, the new law will define protection, obligations by employers and employees, and the necessity for mutual approval, said Jelić.

Remote work has to be based on mutual agreement

"The current Labour Act defines the possibility of remote work, many have used that. Some have signed an annex to their contract, some haven't. There were some disputes over the cost of working from home. However, I believe that we will resolve those matters in a satisfactory way," said Jelić.

President of the Independent Croatian Trade Unions Krešimir Sever expects answers to many issues to be reached through negotiation. "Today we did not discuss any of those issues, just the introduction to the Labour Act," said Sever.

The unions will demand that fixed-term contracts be reduced as one-quarter of Croatia's employees work that way. He added that the unions are categorically opposed to extending working life.

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May the 3rd, 2021 - Croatian Labour Minister Josip Aladrovic sat down to listen to the concerns both employers and employees have had to deal with throughout the pandemic, touched on the regulation of remote work and telework, and offered assurances about the refined Labour Law.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the president of the Independent Croatian Trade Unions, Kresimir Sever, said on a recent HRT show that employees aren't in the center of attention, as was the case in previous years, because the coronavirus crisis has become a much more important topic. He added that workers' problems have been set aside, but they exist and they are very much still there.

''What's worse is that because of the coronavirus crisis, they've even intensified, the government has managed to stop most layoffs with its measures. However, a lot of other things were swept under the carpet. People are being forced to work from home, but without the addition of what's stipulated in an employment contract. Nobody asked them if they had the conditions for carrying out such work from home at all or not,'' Sever pointed out.

Sever also said some employers have taken workers from their annual leave in order to work from home, and some workers have been forced into annual leave. He said that the government paid four thousand kuna in wages for their job preservation measure, and some employers put their workers on the minimum wage, keeping the difference to themselves.

Sever emphasised that things were exceptionally difficult for people back during that time, especially because people lacked much needed social contact. The president of the Independent Croatian Trade Unions also pointed out that back at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, some workers worked even without protective equipment. The workers also had a fear of losing their jobs, become unwell, and even death.

''Only now can people see how important a worker is, without a worker... there's nothing,'' he added.

Labour Minister Josip Aladrovic said when he listened to the president of the Independent Croatian Trade Unions, Kresimir Sever, who noted that the situation looked quite negative, and that he thought he was exaggerating. Sever replied to Labour Minister Josip Aladrovic that these were not exaggerations, but that people truly are afraid.

He said that the formal phase of the adoption of the Labour Law is beginning, and that it will minimise the problems that Sever had been talking about.

''The situation isn't all that black, but yes, the situation could be made better,'' the Minister emphasised.

The director general of the Croatian Employers' Association, Damir Zoric, disagreed with Sever. He said if an employer is doing something wrong, that it is on them and not all employers should be generalised by those taking advantage of government measures.

''I'd rather say that the situation is as Labour Minister Josip Aladrovic said it was - there are negative phenomena everywhere, but in most cases in this pandemic, good work has been done together,'' he added.

He stressed that employers, not just workers, also have many fears. Zoric said that there are also issues with employees and not only employers, but fortunately such people aren't in the majority. He added that certain problems need to be solved, such as those surrounding the Croatian attitude towards teleworking, because it hasn't been included in the Labour Law. He pointed out that more than thirty percent of people in Croatia have been working remotely ever since the pandemic struck.

Labour Minister Josip Aladrovic then said that the new Labour Law would include the proper regulation of telework, and that the framework of that law had already been set out.

''This act will be a proposal for a new Labour Law, which should define the roles of employers and the role of workers, as well as their protection, in a much better way,'' Aladrovic emphasised.

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