HEP workers who sued the company for the unilateral termination of the collective agreement at the end of 2002 and won their court cases, thus collecting their claims, now have to return all that money, with interest!
According to estimates, this amounts to as much as 12 million kuna that workers must return to HEP, writes Večernji list. As for how many workers are involved, different figures come from the management of HEP and the union. According to management data, it concerns 756 workers, while the union cites a figure of around 1700 workers.
HEP workers have filed lawsuits against the company on various grounds, the management states, with one group of lawsuits relating to fixed rights – Easter bonuses, gifts for children, and similar, while another pertains to claims for the adjustment of personal incomes…
The workers won those lawsuits and collected their claims upon the finality of the judgments. However, HEP filed constitutional complaints against the judgments of the county courts, and by the decision of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia, all cases for which a constitutional complaint was filed were returned for retrial.
– The competent courts before which the proceedings were conducted rejected the workers’ claims, and the companies of the HEP Group acquired the right to claim everything that the workers received based on previous final judgments – the principal and the costs of the proceedings with interest as well as the costs of lost lawsuits, HEP states. They add that the collection procedures from the workers have begun and that companies from the HEP Group calculate the exact amount of claims for each worker and regulate the method of collecting the claims with them.
The president of the independent union of HEP workers, Luko Marojica, says that a dirty political game has occurred in this whole case, in which the Constitutional Court got involved. In his opinion, that court is not competent to decide on the merits of that dispute, yet it made its stance on the matter, which was then accepted by the Supreme Court, which did not work in favor of the workers.
Marojica states that the amounts each worker must return vary and depend on the case. He cites the example that some workers now have to return as much as 30,000 kuna. This includes the principal, interest, and court costs.
