The Social Democratic Party (SDP) has sent to parliament a bill on establishing labour and social courts as a measure to protect the rights of workers and ensure the payment of taxes and contributions from salaries into the state budget.
Presenting the bill, SDP parliamentarians Ingrid Anticevic Marinovic and Milanka Opacic told a news conference in Zagreb on Tuesday that their party would like to protect workers at least in the normative form "at a time when they are deprived of their rights".
"It is a national interest to protect workers and their work, while the Government is protecting ony the capital," said Anticevic Marinovic.
The bill, proposed by the leading Opposition party, envisages the establishment of labour and social courts in county seats, with a higher-instance labour and social court headquartered in Zagreb.
Courts of this kind will be expected to make rulings within two months. Workers will be exempted from paying court costs and a significant part of other legal expenses.
Opacic said that many European Union member states already had such courts as efficient mechanisms for the protection of the labour force's rights as well as of the interests of the state in terms of collection of taxes and contributions on salaries.
The SDP MPs warned that last November, 70,000 Croatians went to work but did not receive salaries and employers failed to pay contributions for them, which was why the state budget was deprived of HRK 13.5 billion.
The SDP fears that by the end of this year the number of Croatians going to work but receiving no pay can rise to 100,000.
