Class Struggles in Croatia: Summer 2024

The Tourism Sector

Same as every year, Croatian media spent most of the summer of 2024 discussing the tourist season. As an extremely tourism-dependent country, Croatia was faced with a significant problem: stagnating numbers of tourists have caused concern about the future of the tourist sector as a whole, and the viability of the entire service-based economic model of modern-day Croatia thus came into question. 

Regardless of how Croatian tourism has been doing these past few years, the bourgeoisie in the sector, both local and foreign, have undoubtedly benefited from one key factor: the lack of labor struggles. No surprises there, as tourism remains one the most precarious sectors of the Croatian economy, with the lowest rates of unionization. In order to get a complete picture of this situation, we also have to take into account the significant influx of seasonal workers from the former Yugoslavia (mostly Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia, and Kosovo), as well as the increasing number of long-term foreign workers from Asia’s poorest regions. These foreign workers have little “legal tutelage” in the workplace, and the reactionary unions do not seek to organize them. Even as the complaints of migrant workers across the service and construction industries grow and become more and more open, these obstacles—for the moment—have still served to nip their struggles in the bud.

Class struggle in Croatia has been at an historic low ever since the country’s entry into the EU in 2013, which served as an exhaust vent for tens of thousands of dissatisfied wage laborers who decided to emigrate to Western European countries (most notably Germany, Austria, Ireland, and Sweden). Protest movements which were picking up speed in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and recession quickly deflated, and have not recovered since. Most working class struggles in the post-2013 period occurred in the public sector, where labor unions remained numerous and influential.

Class Action in the Preschools

As the summer of 2024 approached, preschool workers in three small Croatian towns—Slunj, Biograd na Moru, and Vrsar/Orsera—went on strike. Preschool workers’ salaries are set to increase by 30–40%, thanks to this year’s new wage regulations for public and state employees. This raise is part of a larger initiative by the Croatian government, totaling roughly €1.5 billion. The goal is to temporarily offset the decline in the value of average wages, which was driven by the significant wave of inflation that followed the introduction of the euro. In Croatia, preschools (unlike elementary and high schools) fall under the jurisdiction of local administrators. This means that the municipality serves as one of the two parties signing the contract. In early May, even though more than 50 other cities had already signed the new collective agreement, the small towns of Slunj, Biograd na Moru, and Vrsar/Orsera did not. When their local administrations refused to sign, workers at the three preschools decided to go on strike. All three of these strikes were organized by the Education, Media, and Culture Union of Croatia (Sindikat obrazovanja, medija i kulture Hrvatske, SOMK). The SOMK is a relatively new union, only having been established in 2010 as a section of the Union of Autonomous Trade Unions of Croatia (Savez samostalnih sindikata Hrvatske, SSSH), itself an affiliate of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

The SSSH is the formal successor to the Tito-era League of Trade Unions of Croatia (Savez sindikata Hrvatske, SSH), which was the only legal trade union confederation in Croatia before 1989. It remains the largest trade union confederation in the country. Many of the private sector unions affiliated with the SSSH, as well as the confederation’s leadership itself, are notorious for their backroom deals thus betraying the workers’ interests. On the other hand, the two most prominent public sector unions of the SSSH confederation—the SOMK, and the Preporod education workers’ union—are, despite their rhetorical “radicalism,” notable for their relative combativeness.

The SOMK, however, is not the  “representative” union of kindergarten teachers in Croatia, but it actually only represents a minority of those workers. The representative union is the much older Union of Preschool Workers of Croatia (Sindikat radnika u predškolskom odgoju i obrazovanju Hrvatske, SRPOOH), which is affiliated to the Center of Croatian Trade Unions (Matica hrvatskih sindikata, MHS)—SSSH’s main rival within the public sector. The MHS with its various branches was founded in the 1990s by dissident trade unionists, and it is currently the largest public sector trade union confederation. 

Perhaps even more than the SSSH, the MHS gained a reputation for being a “pro-business union,” always ready to compromise for the benefit of the bourgeois state. This became evident during the 2019 education workers’ strike, when the leaderships of the MHS-affiliated unions declared an end to the strike—in direct contradiction to the openly expressed will of the workers, who were ready to continue the strike even after being threatened by a government crackdown. The minority Preporod union stood in opposition to this decision, but it could not influence the outcome.

Around the same time, a similar situation could have been observed in preschools/kindergartens: the SOMK started to organize protests and other public actions of preschool employees as part of their struggle against declining living standards, while the much larger SRPOOH remained passive. It is no secret that the SOMK was originally founded by dissatisfied members of the SRPOOH, and it seems clear that their more combative approach has yielded results: membership in the SOMK grew from a mere 200 in 2010 to over 3,500 in this decade.

The three strikes in Slunj, Biograd, and Vrsar/Orsera have to be understood in this context. The SOMK felt comfortable enough to initiate simultaneous strikes in three distinct locations. As previously stated, it is the city/municipality that pays wages to preschool workers, and not the Ministry of Education. The situation kindergarten workers face is further exacerbated by the lack of a strong industrial union. Any form of national mobilization, like the one done by the “other” teachers in 2019, becomes much more difficult. Consequently, kindergarten workers are left to fight struggles that are isolated and “localized.”

Due to these factors, the three aforementioned strikes had very different results. The first strike to end was the one in Slunj, with a partial workers’ victory: on June 7th, the mayor of Slunj agreed to raise their wages, but declined to sign the new collective agreement proposed by the union. The strike in Vrsar/Orsera followed suit, and after six weeks of strike action the local government agreed to most demands.

The strikes in Slunj and Vrsar/Orsera were not easy, and their respective local governments did their best to crush them through all available means. In Vrsar, three preschool teachers were even suspended from their posts. Still, both of those strikes were more-or-less successful. The strike in Biograd na Moru was a different story: the local government, which has been planning to privatize the school for some time, further escalated its stance against the striking workers and immediately rejected any offer of agreement. Security guards were placed in front of the town’s kindergartens in order to prevent the entry of the unionists into the building. In fact, the deputy mayor declared the strike illegal, and called the police on striking workers. The staff were forbidden from contacting children’s parents, or to even access most parts of the buildings they usually worked in. The fact that kindergarten attendance became lower as summer progressed also proved to be an issue, as the strikers lost some of their leverage. On July 16th, after two months on strike, the workers and the SOMK decided to end the strike without achieving any of their stated goals. The SOMK’s statement following July 16th claimed that strike actions will continue in the fall, but nothing has happened so far.

The “Warning Strike” at Calucem

As mentioned previously, public sector employees (and particularly education workers) generally remain the most militant segment of the Croatian working class. Still, workers’ struggles do occur in the private sector as well. One such instance was the very short “strike” at the Calucem cement plant (part of the Spain-based Molins Construction Solutions group) in the city of Pula, which took place on July 10th, 2024. The strike was organized following a month of futile negotiations between the Calucem company management and the SSSH-affiliated Croatian Construction Workers’ Union (Sindikat graditeljstva Hrvatske, SGH). The union requested a wage hike of 20%, a lunch bonus, and more days off per year; the management offered a mere 6.75% wage increase, and the negotiations came to an impasse. 

In light of this, the union decided to organize a four-hour “warning strike.” Except this isn’t really a strike. It’s more like a threat to “strike for real, next time.” Management tried to prevent the strike by “bribing” workers with a one-time €900 bonus, but to no avail: reportedly, the strike was supported by over 80% of Calucem’s 150 employees. Soon after the end of the warning strike, Calucem’s management offered a 7.25% wage increase in 2024, and a further 10% increase in 2025. The SGH agreed to this offer, once again demonstrating its lack of determination, and put an end to workers’ mobilization in the factory.

The Calucem strike and the three kindergarten strikes described earlier were the four most important instances of workers’ struggles in Croatia during the summer of 2024. Such a low level of working-class activity is not an exception; it has been the rule for much of the last decade in Croatia. Nevertheless, it is important to study both the general trends, as well as the particular details of such struggles, as the Party, when its strength allows it, should be prepared to actively intervene in the workers’ movement. It should also be noted that other ex-Yugoslav countries have not been covered by this report, even though some of them certainly had a “hot” summer when it came to working class activity. Bosnia-Herzegovina, for instance, saw a wave of protests and strike threats in the education, healthcare, telecommunications, and mining sectors—all of which might be covered in a future report.