Unions of employees at the Zagreb Holding municipal utility company have abandoned negotiations on a new collective agreement, state news platform Hina reported on Tuesday. Pročitaj više

Later this week they will agree on their next steps, union leader Mirjana Kaltak told Hina on Tuesday.

She said the management board was “not willing to meet the unions’ demands,” adding that the unions demanded a salary increase and job classification at the group’s subsidiaries. Eight of the nine unions participating in the negotiations said that the management’s offer of a 4.5 percent salary increase was “unacceptably low.”

Although they did not specify what sort of increase would make them happy, the unions said they wanted “workers’ material rights” to be increased by 87 million kuna (€11.6 million) per year, which amounts to 10 percent of the current salary budget.

Another union leader, Drazen Jovic, said the unions would meet on Thursday and that they were “ready to go on strike” until their demands were met, adding that the management board was “unlikely to change their mind.”

The abandoned negotiations are seen as a downturn in the management board’s relations with the unions, after they had successfully agreed that there was a surplus of 700 employees at Zagreb Holding earlier this year.

Hina did not say how many people are employed by the company in total.