Croacia - Journalists denied right to strike (2011)

In the local daily Glas Istre, in Pula, the employer has repeatedly violated the Labour Law and the company-level collective agreement. In August 2010, the Municipality Court ruled that the collective agreement in the company had been illegally cancelled. A strike was legally announced for 7 November. Prior to the strike, the employer exercised pressure on the workers not to strike and engaged journalists from other publications to write for the paper during the strike. As the employer and the strike committee did not reach an agreement on the extent of minimum product maintenance during the strike, the decision was left to the court. The judge of the County Court in Pula, Ondina Vidulić Matijević, ruled that the production of newspaper is an activity that cannot be terminated during a strike and issued a working obligation for 20 workers, thus effectively restricting the right to strike for the journalists of Glas Istre. However, in a different procedure, the same court upheld on 29 December the decision of the Municipality Court from August on the illegal cancellation of the collective agreement. The right to strike was also contested at the local radio station Radio 101, in Zagreb, where the management claimed that a warning strike organised on 7 November 2010 due to unpaid salaries was illegal.