April 13, 2023 - It seems that what used to be the Croatian dream is now becoming less and less desirable. Interest for work in the Croatian public sector is slowly but surely waning. In a survey of 1,800 respondents, 40 percent of civil servants said they were satisfied with their workplace, which is below the national average.

As Poslovni writes, employment in the public sector has become unattractive due to salaries that are below the national average, few opportunities for progression and the inability to influence decisions that must be implemented, professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, Dragan Bagić pointed out on Wednesday at the round table "How to attract workers to the public sector".

In a survey of 1,800 respondents, 40 percent of civil servants declared that they were satisfied with their workplace, which is below the national average, Bagić stated. About 30 percent of them are thinking about changing employers, which is above the average (25 percent), so Croatia is threatened with a further outflow of employees from the civil service.

Only 11 percent of employees are satisfied with their incomes, which is also significantly below the national average, said Bagić, warning that wages in the civil service have fallen in real terms due to inflation and lag significantly more than in the real sector.

If such a trend continues, the public sector will not be sustainable, Bagić believes, and notes that civil servants are often the first to be attacked by citizens because of decisions they have no influence over, and are obliged to implement.

Sanda Pipunić, head of the Civil Service Administration of the Ministry of Justice, said that civil servants are dissatisfied with their salaries, working conditions, and other aspects of their work. Younger generations, the so-called millennials tend to change employers more often and look for more flexible working conditions in order to be able to balance business and family obligations.

There are not enough competent officials in key positions, and civil servants at lower levels do not sufficiently participate in decision-making, warned Pipunić.

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ZAGREB, 8 April (2022) - The government on Friday rejected the unions' proposal to increase base pay for public sector workers by 4 per cent as of 1 April, and the unions demanded that Prime Minister Andrej Plenković join in the negotiations by next Wednesday.

The government stood by its proposal that base pay could not be increased by more than 2 per cent, Preporod Union leader Željko Stipić told the press after the meeting.

The unions want the prime minister to join in the efforts to resolve this issue, arguing that the amount of money in question was not so large that a compromise solution could not be reached. They announced strikes after Easter unless the prime minister responded to their demands.

"All the unions agree with such a course of action," Stipić said.

All 11 public sector unions rejected the government's offer of a base pay rise of 2 per cent as of 1 April, demanding a 4 per cent increase.

Since the latest data on inflation shows that prices have increased by 6.3 per cent on an annual level, the public sector unions continue to insist on a base pay increase of 4 per cent as of 1 April and on further talks at the end of May on increasing the base in the second half of the year, depending on inflation, other pay rates in the country and the economic situation, the unions said.

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