Mayor of Rijeka and prominent member of the Social Democrat Party (SDP), Vojko Obersnel, said on Tuesday that the 3. Maj shipyard should be saved by any means, including civil disobedience, and added that there was no reason not to invoke the special Lex Agrokor to save the troubled shipyards Uljanik and 3. Maj.
He said that although it was recently believed that the shipbuilding sector had been revived, once again both companies have found themselves fighting for survival. He hailed the completed restructuring plan for 3. Maj and said its problems were due to its irresponsible owner, and called for 3. Maj to continue with making ships.
“We had defended 3. May (from bakruptcy) for more than 30 years, and we will continue to defend it by any means necessary. If Uljanik is suffering from problems so huge it cannot solve them on its own, then there is the special law on state-appointed management, dubbed Lex Agrokor – and if that law could have been passed in order to save Agrokor, there is no reason not to use the same method to save Uljanik and 3. Maj, if Uljanik’s management can’t do it on their own,” Obersnel said at a May Day celebration near the northern Adriatic port city of Rijeka.
The Rijeka-based 3. Maj is a major shipyard which employs 1,300 people and majority-owned by Uljanik Group, another shipbuilding company based in the town of Pula which has a total of 4,400 employees. The businesses are seen as the backbone of the shipbuilding industry in northwestern Croatia even though they have spent decades struggling to turn a profit.
3. Maj recently posted a 21.9 million kuna (€2.95 million) loss in Q1 2018, while the entire Uljanik Grupa recorded a 41.6 million kuna loss (€5.61 million) in the same period. In March, the state-owned Uljanik selected the Kermas Energija private shipbuilding company for its strategic partner. Kermas Energija is expected to invest to increase Uljanik’s equity and to help in preparing its restructuring plan.
Obersnel congratulated May Day to everyone and turned to the role of left-leaning parties in the modern world. He said the so-called precariat has replaced proletariat in the vocabulary of leftist parties, and said Croatia had the highest number of people working on fixed-term contracts in the EU.
He added that in the past 15 years Croatia has lost more than 140,000 jobs and gained 180,000 pensioners, and that the government’s idea to extend retirement age made no sense when the country is experiencing problems in creating jobs as young people are leaving Croatia in droves.
(€1 = 7.41 kuna)
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