The Union of Croatian Drivers believes that the decision of the Management of Dukat to terminate the employment contracts of 130 of their drivers is calculated to avoid the company’s criminal liability, rather than for the purpose of business rationalization.
This was stated today at a press conference in Zagreb by the president of SHV, Miljenko Gočin, and the union representative at Dukat, Boris Vlajić. Specifically, the Management of Dukat offered the same drivers contracts for business cooperation in such a way that they continue to perform their usual jobs, but as independent entrepreneurs. SHV claims that the reason lies in the illegal operations of Dukat. They say that it did not comply with the Law on Working Hours and Mandatory Rest for Mobile Workers, as well as the recording devices in road transport related to the weekend rest of drivers and daily working hours, and the legal obligation of the employer to calculate and pay the pension contributions for drivers of freight motor vehicles with a total mass greater than 7.5 tons with an increased duration. SHV has been warning them for over a year, and reports have been submitted to the State Inspectorate and the Road Transport Inspection. According to their statements, several inspections have taken place, after which the employer began to work on changing the previous way of doing business, but shortly thereafter, the Management made the decision to terminate the contracts.
– The Management intends to resolve its issues of illegal operations by shifting all responsibility onto the workers who would be independent entrepreneurs, and to exploit the workers who are led to claim State incentive funds to purchase inadequately maintained freight motor vehicles with the severance payments they receive. This poses an excessive and unacceptable risk for the workers, as they will be obliged to work in the same manner as they have until now, specifically performing deliveries without the possibility of complying with the mentioned laws regarding weekend breaks and daily working hours, said Gočin.
He added that, in addition, workers will be imposed with actual business costs of the craft or company such as accounting, taxes, etc. At the same time, they will be obliged to maintain and repair any purchased vehicles without discounts on the quantities that the joint-stock company Dukat d.d. has previously achieved, and with a smaller monthly fund of financial resources than what Dukat has realistically spent. Workers would be put in a situation where they have no possibility of taking annual leave, nor of going on sick leave, because in that case they would have no income, and according to the contract with Dukat, they would have to ensure another trained driver to perform the contracted jobs or Dukat would terminate the business cooperation with them. Given that in this way of working, and provided that the vehicle does not break down at any moment, the workers would be left with less monthly than their current salary, there would be no room to hire another driver. Vlajić added that the average net salary of a Dukat driver is 5,200 kuna. Thus, looking at it this way, Dukat’s claims that severance payments (20,000 kuna), unemployment benefits, and incentives for self-employment will help the drivers who are entrepreneurs do not hold, according to SHV.
Vlajić recounted how he was taken aback when he was called to the Management of Dukat on Friday. He said that Dukat currently employs 130 drivers, that it offers contracts for external cooperation to 85 of them, and that the goal of such a small number of contracts is to force the drivers to accept this offer so that they are not overtaken by others. Furthermore, he said, if Dukat had respected the laws, it should have hired another 20 drivers.
SHV announced that in a few days they will go to France to inform the owner of Dukat about this situation, as they believe that they do not know what is happening.
