Judicial employees continue strike until demands are met

The County Court in Zagreb ruled that the strike in the judiciary is legal, and already this morning it was initiated by the Union of State and Local Civil Servants and State Employees in all bodies of judicial authority and the State Attorney's Office. Among other things, court hearings were blocked. And, after a meeting with the leaders of public and state service unions, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković announced that the salaries of more than 200,000 civil servants will be increased.

“Finally we have court practice, there is an appeal deadline of 15 days, but we are satisfied. We have received information that around three and a half thousand people joined the strike, possibly more. But in any case turnout is high and all necessary jobs are being done as we announced. We will define how long we intend to strike, we will coordinate and everything is still uncertain. We also support judicial police officers because among our members there are more than a thousand of them,” said Iva Šušković the head of the Union of State and Local Civil Servants and State Employees after the decision by the County Court.

“Currently here, since we are the county court, we have investigations, urgent detention, and urgent orders, all this will be done and the rest will wait,” said Sanja Trninić, the Commissioner of the Judicial Police Union at the Zagreb County Court.

Minister of Justice Ivan Malenica has called the union leaders who organized the strike to a meeting.

Meanwhile, after a meeting with the leaders of representative trade unions in public services, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković announced that it had been agreed that they will adopt a memorandum of understanding.

“This will result in the adoption of a government decision, on the payment of a temporary supplement for salaries. We have concluded that we have to go by the saying, he who gives quickly gives more. This in a manner based on a government decision which would increase salaries by 100 euros for those who have the lowest salaries in state and public services. These are people with salary coefficients of 0.631 to 1.100. Net salaries will increase by 80 euros for those with coefficients of 1.111 to 1.523, and salaries will increase by 60 euros net for those with a coefficient of 1.530 to 1.867,” said Plenković.

Salaries will increase for 219 thousand employees.

“In a certain manner, through branch collective agreements, all of our individual demands for salary increases for all employees within all of our sectors, have been satisfied with this approach. While, the most care was taken for those categories with the lowest income,” said Union coordinator Sanja Šprem.

Officials with the lowest coefficients will receive a raise of 18 to 20 percent.

Source: HRT