One might say that the labor inspectors are quite diligent and do not allow anyone to deviate from the regulations. An example is our small construction company, whose name and the identity of the director we cannot mention because the inspectors might knock on the door again.
Our company has regularly paid salaries to its employees (albeit minimal) during these difficult times for construction, but it seems that the inspectors were waiting like a loaded gun for the director to make a wrong move. Of course, they caught him. According to Article 7 of the Minimum Wage Act (NN 67/08), ‘a company will be fined between 60,000 and 100,000 kuna if it does not pay the minimum wage to an employee within the prescribed deadlines, with the penalty (according to paragraph 3) multiplied by the number of employees who have not been paid the minimum wage. The responsible person, i.e., the director, will also be fined between seven and ten thousand kuna (paragraph 2).’
The legislator has decided to harshly punish those who do not adhere to the rules of the game, but our problem is that those who have been violating the laws for years are not punished, and then everything falls on those who try to adhere to these rules.
Specific Case At one point, the company could not pay the minimum wage on time, i.e., on the fifteenth of the month. A few days later, the inspection arrived and established this situation. The director says they believed it was a setup, but fortunately, that was not the case as inspectors also knocked on the doors of other construction companies that day.
The company’s management paid the minimum wages to the workers a few days after the inspectors arrived, but the director claims that the reason was not the inspection, but funds that arrived in the company’s account which were redirected to minimum wages. As proof, he states that they had regularly paid minimum wages until then; otherwise, the inspectors would have already found something.
The company undeniably violated the mentioned law, but did it really have to be punished so harshly? On these pages, we have already quoted the late Vladimir Primorac and his statement that laws must be respected, even if the world falls apart. However, it seems to me that in this case (or perhaps better said, in this situation of our economy), it is more appropriate to quote a figure – J. B. Tito – who was by no means a democrat or a legalist, and once criticized judges for adhering to the law like a drunkard to a fence. Well, although we generally lean towards Primorac, inspectors should soften their approach towards companies that do pay wages to workers, even if minimal, or in specific cases, not adhere to the law like a drunkard to a fence.
