As if it wasn’t enough that they have been waiting for 24 years for their nine salaries to be paid, the workers of the factory Revija from Šibenik yesterday experienced a new humiliation orchestrated by Prime Minister Andrej Plenković. Due to the untruths that the Prime Minister has put forward on this topic, we feel a duty to react and clarify to the public the chronology of events in the case of the defrauded Revija workers.
For many years, the workers of Revija factory, together with the workers of factory Plobest from Ploče, have been fighting for the payment of long-earned salaries. Over the past three years, representatives of the Novi sindikat and the workers of these two companies have been at a series of meetings with government representatives who promised to solve this problem. After meeting with probably all the ministers who could be relevant to this topic in any way, after years of evading responsibility from various government representatives who claimed that solving this problem was beyond their power, this time we decided to insist on a meeting with the only person who really has the power in his hands – Prime Minister Plenković.
We announced the arrival of the representatives of the Novi sindikat and the Revija workers a week in advance. We did not receive any response until the evening before the announced arrival at the Government building, when we were informed that we would be received by the “responsible Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Tomislav Ćorić”. Although we were given extremely little time to react, we confirmed the arrival of one representative of the Novi sindikat and a group of Revija workers, but also expressed our dissatisfaction with the fact that the Prime Minister was avoiding talking to the workers and made it clear that we expected to meet with him soon. Although television cameras recorded the arrival of our delegation at the Government building, the Prime Minister told the media the untruth that we had refused to come to the meeting. What actually happened was that our representatives at the Government building were told that the meeting had been cancelled, with the false excuse that we had not provided the names of those who would be attending the meeting.
In other words, Prime Minister Plenković first ignored the Revija workers who had announced their arrival for days, only to relent at the last minute and offer the hospitality of his “competent Vice President”, despite the fact that in recent years he has already offered the services of all his competent vice presidents and ministers, none of whom have done anything to solve this problem. But not only are the Revija workers, who despite their advanced age crossed half of Croatia to get to St. Mark’s Square, not worthy of being received personally by the Prime Minister, but it was ultimately beneath the honor of his “competent vice president” Ćorić as well. Instead of a glimmer of hope that justice might still be attainable, the workers thus received another portion of arrogant humiliation from those in power.
Revija workers, Plobest workers and representatives of the Novi sindikat will come without hesitation and meet with anyone who has the power and authority to solve this problem. Once again, we emphasize that in the past years we held a series of meetings where former and current ministers explained to us that they do not have the authority to solve this problem. This time, we expect a political decision to finally be made that this problem will be solved, and only Prime Minister Plenković can do that.
The Republic of Croatia deceived the workers of Revija and Plobest in the dirtiest way. A quarter of a century later, it is high time that the government takes responsibility for this and compensates these people who are asking for nothing more than their hard-earned wages.
