‘Information about 56 layoffs at Hina is malicious gossip’

At Hina, there will be layoffs, but to a significantly lesser extent than what was discussed at the last board meeting, said Branka Valentić, the director of Hina, today at the meeting of the Parliamentary Media Committee, who called the information about the layoff of 56 Hina employees ‘false and malicious rumors’.

“The restructuring program will foresee a significantly smaller number of layoffs, and it mainly concerns workers from the Media Monitoring service for whom, in agreement with the Ministry of Finance, a transition to another institution is being prepared for the majority. Most of the other employees planned to be included in the restructuring program meet the initial conditions for retirement, and severance payments will also be made, in accordance with the law,” Valentić said.

The Committee discussed Hina at the request of Sunčana Glavak (HDZ), who requested the discussion due to anonymous complaints claiming that 56 layoffs were being prepared at Hina.

Valentić did not want to disclose the exact number of layoffs as the Management Board has not yet commented on the restructuring plan, which is expected to do so on Friday. She reported that a reorganization is planned at Hina, following the findings of the state audit and an independent auditing firm for the period from 2008 to 2011, which determined that Hina’s losses exceed eight million kuna.

“Since 2009, Hina has continuously operated at a loss, and the new management found the institution with a misguided Media Monitoring project, which has been generating and still generates losses of 100 thousand kuna on a monthly basis,” Valentić asserted.

She also stated that Hina has digitized only five percent of the material from the acquired Vjesnik archive and claimed that the Media Monitoring project was also legally questionable, as scanning and selling scanned newspaper editions violated copyright. Because of this, she said, Hina was exposed to a lawsuit from the Copyright Protection Society, which ended in a settlement, and threats of lawsuits from other publishers, whose compensation claims, she claims, would lead to Hina’s closure.

“Hina invested 18 million kuna in Media Monitoring, and in the past ten years not a single camera has been purchased,” the director said, warning that “Hina is the only agency in Europe that does not have a video service, whose photo service has no users at all, and its audio service is unsatisfactory.”

The new management, Valentić claims, found Hina with numerous lawsuits from users and employees. She reminded that since 2009, salaries for employees have been reduced three times and asserted that at the same time, ‘really huge salaries’ have been paid to middle and senior management at Hina.

She also stated that Hina’s core activity has been neglected, that the professional level has fallen due to “negative personnel selection in which individuals with scant journalistic experience but impeccable political suitability have been appointed to leading positions in the editorial office.”

She asserted that this is a cadre that today leads “a small group of dissatisfied individuals who oppose necessary changes and do not choose means, resorting to untruths, disinformation, and anonymous complaints.” “They claim that a purge is underway at Hina and the removal of politically unsuitable personnel to defend their contracts,” Valentić said, emphasizing that “the truth is exactly the opposite.”

“No journalist or editor has left their job against their will, not even the members of the former editor-in-chief’s collegium who are still in that body, disregarding the new editor-in-chief’s desire to gather his team,” Valentić said.

She noted that one member of the inherited collegium still has a higher income than the editor-in-chief and herself, and that “another member of the collegium has an addendum to the employment contract for the development of Hina, even though these are jobs that do not exist at all.”

Valentić also stated that Hina took a loan of 2.9 million kuna to pay severance to employees, and a smaller part will be used for investments in the IT system, which she claims is on the verge of collapse. She is convinced that the planned restructuring will bring Hina to “positive zero” in 2014.

Jasen Mesić (HDZ) protested because the chairwoman of Hina’s Management Board, Gordana Simonović, did not attend the meeting, who informed the Committee by letter that she would refrain from participating in meetings in the coming period as the Commission for Conflict of Interest has not yet responded whether she is in a conflict of interest, given that she has also been appointed to the Council for Electronic Media.

“She is clearly in a conflict of interest and did not need to seek the Commission’s opinion on this. The Management Board must confirm whether they have given consent to the restructuring plan, but instead, she writes that she will not appear at the last few meetings of the Management Board. You can’t believe it,” Mesić said.

He accused the chairwoman of the Commission of “grabbing privileges and irresponsibility towards the ownership of the Republic of Croatia,” and the ruling party for ignoring warnings that a person who is already in Hina’s Management Board should not be appointed to the Council for Electronic Media.

Mesić is against the transfer of Vjesnik’s documentation from Hina to the Croatian State Archive, as he believes that Hina is thereby relinquishing a valuable resource that could benefit it in the future. He rejected Branka Valentić’s claims that the editorial collegium at Hina was appointed based on political suitability. “Many say that you came to your position from a ruling party, but we won’t talk about that now,” Mesić said.

His party colleague Sunčana Glavak also opposes the shutdown of Media Monitoring, as she is convinced that Hina could earn from press clipping services. She also expressed her confusion as to why the closure of Hina’s marketing was planned.

HNS member Goran Beus Richembergh is convinced, however, that Hina cannot earn from Vjesnik’s archive and press clipping. “We can say that Hina can create a space shuttle program, but until it builds the first rocket, it cannot fly into space.”

The president of Hina’s Workers’ Council, Nenad Bach, shares the same opinion, stating that the former management did everything to utilize that archive and earn from press clipping, but that it was impossible to break into the market alongside an established company that earns between 30 and 40 million kuna annually from those services.

He is pleased that by transferring Vjesnik’s archive to the state archive, the jobs of eight people from Hina’s Media Monitoring will be preserved. Bach also stated that the new management should be given a chance to improve the quality of the core activity, “after a poor editorial policy in the past six or seven years.”

The planned restructuring of Hina was also welcomed by external Committee member Andrej Matijašević, who is also a union representative at Hina.

Although he emphasizes that the union is ‘a priori’ against layoffs, Matijašević pointed out that these are layoffs of employees who meet the conditions for early retirement, and they will also receive severance pay.

The meeting was also attended by Hina’s editor-in-chief Serđo Obratov, who also stated that he is “satisfied under the given conditions,” as his “first intention was to protect the editorial office where there will be no layoffs or salary reductions.”

He complained that due to the opposition to changes from the members of the former editor-in-chief’s collegium, he is unable to gather his own team, and he boasted that since he has been at the head of the editorial office, Hina’s productivity has significantly increased. He denied anonymous complaints about poor relations in the editorial office, emphasizing that “poor relations would certainly not lead to greater productivity and quality.”