Croatia Unions Push For Referendum on Outsourcing

Seventeen trade unions in Croatia have collected 612,017 signatures demanding a referendum on outsourcing services in the public sector, which they aim to halt.

The completed list of names was handed to the speaker of parliament, Josip Leko on Wednesday. The petition aimed at preventing public sector outsourcing was initiated in June.

The move was a response to the centre-left government’s strategy of outsourcing non-core activities in the public sector, such as cleaning, maintenance, cooking, security and transport. Officials say the changes will save 37 million euro a year.

According to procedure, once parliament has received a petition seeking a referendum, it forwards it to the Ministry of Public Administration, which counts and verifies the signatures, before returning the initiative to parliament. Leko said that he would make sure that the standard procedure was respected.

Trade unionist Zeljko Stipic said they expected a procedure without delays. “In two-and-a-half months we gathered 612,000 signatures and did our part of the work, so we expect a referendum to be organized within a reasonable and optimal time frame,” he said.

“We want to protect the most vulnerable [workers] in the public sector and secure that this generation leaves behind schools and hospital just as they are,” Stipic added.

In 2010, trade unions collected signatures for a petition against the draft Law on Labour, but the Constitutional Court called off a referendum after the government withdrew the law.

In Croatia’s last successful referendum, in December 2013, two-thirds of voters backed a call to ban same-sex marriage after a petition demanding the referendum collected more than 700,000 signatures. However, turnout was...