The public sector unions and Labour Minister Marin Piletic signed a basic collective agreement for public sector employees and amendments to the collective agreement for civil servants and state employees in the presence of Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic on Friday.

In his speech before the signing ceremony, Plenkovic said that today’s event marked the completion of an important reform of the wage system in Croatia.

He recalled the adoption of the Act on Wages and the dialogue on the regulations on salary coefficients in the civil service and state service, which, he said, had secured the largest ever salary increase of 31.9% on average for 244,000 employees in the civil service and state service.

Detailed dialogue

Plenkovic said that the government had not approached the regulations unilaterally, but had conducted a very detailed dialogue with the trade unions before adopting them.

Over time and through further dialogue with the unions, it will be determined whether there are reasons for further changes to the regulations, he said.

Plenkovic reiterated that his government was the first to try to “summarise the number of jobs after many years and to uphold the principle of equal pay for equal work, regardless of the sector” by adopting the relevant laws and regulations

“We were aware that it would not be possible to make everyone happy with this reform, but we knew that we had strengthened Croatia’s economic, social and financial position with our policies in recent years and that we could afford this reform,” said Plenkovic.

Inflation has not eaten up wage growth

He said that last year the government increased the holiday allowance from €200 to €300 and the Christmas allowance from €232 to €300, and introduced a child allowance of €100 and an Easter allowance of €100. The basic salary was increased by 5%, from €678 in 2016 to €947, he said.

“That’s a 40% increase. Not so long ago, there were governments in office where the basic salary did not increase at all, and now it has risen by more than €300. That is a huge difference,” he said, emphasising that it could not be said that inflation had eaten up the salary increase.

“The cumulative inflation is much less than the total pay rise during our tenure… in reality, we have high real wage growth,” he said, pointing out that everyone also benefited from the fact that the state had subsidised the prices of gas, electricity and oil products for three years.

Minister: Additional €1.6bn for wages, entitlements

Labour Minister Marin Piletic thanked the trade unions for the constructive dialogue during the drafting of the law on wages and the regulations on wage coefficients, pointing out that an additional €1.6 billion would be allocated for entitlements and higher wages for state and public sector employees.

The President of the Croatian Police Union, Dubravko Jagic, expressed satisfaction with the new salary coefficients, and the President of the Croatian Teachers’ Union, Sanja Sprem, stated that negotiations on the basic salary in accordance with the basic collective agreement would take place again in the autumn.

“We can say that there is a continuous social dialogue in Croatia, as evidenced by the presence of all 11 representative trade unions at today’s signing of the basic collective agreement,” said Sprem.