The once great and respected flagship of the Zagreb chemical and processing industry Chromos Boje i Lakovi d.d. announced the shutdown of production activities in Croatia and the migration of production to Serbia and Slovenia. In other words, what Novi sindikat warned the public about ten years ago and why we filed a criminal complaint that the State Attorney’s Office rejected, will receive its unfortunate epilogue in the coming months.

In addition to extinguishing production and loss of dozens of jobs, there is a fact that the management of the Kansai Helios Group, the owner of Chromos, does not show willingness to cooperate with the trade union in seeking a solution for workers who are threatened with cancellation of employment contracts. For two whole months now, workers have been waiting in vain on Management’s response to the trade union proposal to improve the conditions of the outplacement program for workers. Due to the refusal of talks by the management, Novi sindikat will continue with activities aimed at protecting the workers rights, and is ready to undertake industrial actions, including a strike. With this goal, the process of conciliation before the Economic Social Council was started today. After multiple, unsuccessful attempts to persuade management representatives to hold talks with employee representatives, it has become undeniably clear that management’s goal is to cut costs at the expense of the workers and, to the greatest extent possible, avoid responsibility for mitigating the consequences that will result from the decision to shut production down.