Dioki Workers: What Happened to Us Awaits You

About two hundred former Dioki workers blocked the entrance to the company’s administrative building this morning, demanding payment of overdue wages and severance pay. After discussions with the management leaders, they decided to organize a large protest in Mark’s Square next week.

Last year, after the restructuring of Dioki, 350 workers agreed to go to the labor market with severance pay and the payment of seven overdue wages, while about a hundred workers retained their employment. The workers signed a contract stating that half of that amount was to be paid by February 15, but this was not done.
Dioki’s CEO Leo Dolezil spoke with the representatives of the workers, after which the workers decided not to continue the protest today, but to organize a protest in Mark’s Square next week, on Tuesday or Wednesday, in cooperation with the unions.
– We invite everyone in Croatia who is in a similar situation – dairy farmers, peasants, workers – to join us next week because what happened to us awaits others as well, said former Dioki worker Bojan Kovačević.
Let the state start paying its bills; we are not asking for anything we have not earned. Is there any minister who is willing to work for seven months without pay or for 1500 kuna, Kovačević asked.
Dioki’s management asked the workers for a little more patience as they claim that intensive negotiations are underway, and that within 10 days Dioki could propose a possible deadline for the payment of workers’ claims.
The company Crodux Plin, owned by Ivan Čermak, recently sent a letter of intent expressing a desire to enter Dioki as a strategic partner, related to the production of polystyrene in the Doki branch, and the development of new projects at Dioki’s production site in Zagreb’s Žitnjak.

Today, in addition to Dioki workers, the ‘Baranjska brazda’ association also decided to protest. Farmers dissatisfied with the state of agriculture, especially the proposed law on agricultural land, which they say favors large producers to the detriment of medium and small farmers, took to the Baranja bypass with about a hundred tractors, demanding an urgent meeting with Prime Minister Zoran Milanović.
Farmers are also asking to be informed of the date when their subsidies will be paid, emphasizing that without them there will be no spring planting, which is just around the corner.
With the message that it is five to twelve for solving pressing problems in agriculture, the protesters gathered at the very entrance to Baranja, on the Baranja bypass, about a kilometer from the Drava bridge on the Baranja side, and the president of the ‘Baranjska brazda’ association, Petar Pranjić, said that this is a one-day warning protest to the government, to the ministers of agriculture and finance, Jakovina and Linić.
Since this is a main road, we did not block it because we do not want to create additional problems for citizens who really do not deserve it, Pranjić added, stating that the protest, which started at 12 o’clock, will last until 4 o’clock.