"Vecernji List will hit the newsstands as usual," he told press on Wednesday adding that the number of workers who opted for strike and the number of those working today would be known at the end of the day.

Asked whether it was true that security guards encountered workers arriving in the Vecernji List headquarters in Zagreb, asking them whether they would take part in the strike which began at 9 am, Trupcevic said that the management as well as the trade union would like that this industrial action be conducted in a peaceful environment.

"We must ensure that records are being kept about who is taking part in the strike and who is working," he said that the management had provided the striking committee and striking workers with a separate room so that those who had come to work could work freely and in a normal environment.

Trupcevic said that nobody had terminated the collective agreement.

We negotiated with the trade union about the collective agreement which had expired and we proposed a certain level of material rights, that is between 70 and 80 percent of the material rights they have enjoyed so far, but the trade union responded to the proposal with a call for the strike and ceased communication with the management, he said.

Trupcevic said the strike was unjustified taking into consideration the business conditions in the publishing industry and the economic climate in Croatia.

Reporters of the Vecernji List went on strike on Wednesday protesting against the cancellation of the collective agreement and the consequent restriction of their acquired rights.

On Tuesday the disgruntled reporters held a news conference in the Croatian Journalists' Association (HND) offices at which the heads of the HND and the Croatian Journalists' Union, Zdenko Duka and Gabrijela Galic respectively, expressed support for the strike.

The trade union steward in Vecernji List, Anton Filic, told the news conference the first collective agreement was concluded in Vecernji List in 1996, and that the rights stemming from that agreement were now being cancelled or drastically restricted following an order from the newspaper's owner, the Austrian Styria company.

Filic urged part-time employees in the newspaper to join in the strike despite the fact that they might face the risk of being sacked due to "their undefined status."

The head of the editorial staff council, Marinko Jurasic, said the cause for which Vecernji List reporters were fighting was not only their acquired rights but also media freedom.

He warned against depriving 120 part-time journalists of their rights, adding that the management was exploiting their position to restrict the strike. There are 120 part-time reporters as against 102 permanently employed ones in Vecernji List.

Jurasic also dismissed as malicious the claims that Vecernji List journalists are going on strike despite high salaries.

Croatian Journalists' Union president Galic joined in the assessment that the industrial action in Vecernji List was also a struggle for media freedom and fundamental social and economic rights of journalists.

HND leader Duka said the international and European federations of journalists had supported the cause of Vecernji List workers and the struggle against double standards of the Styria management, which he said gave some rights to Austrian reporters but denied them to Croatians.