On several occasions, Church institutions have warned that efforts are necessary to regulate relations in the commerce sector and protect workers from exhaustion, the arbitrariness of certain unscrupulous employers and especially the ruthlessness of big business, which is not interested in respecting the dignity of Croatian workers or protecting Croatian national interests. There have been some developments in this direction, which, unfortunately, met the fate of “one step forward, two backward.” This may explain the most recent amendments to the Commerce Act, adopted by the Government of the Republic of Croatia on July 21, 2011. According to this act, it may be concluded that the Government has given up trying to regulate this area of economic and public life. There are no clearly valid reasons for such a move. Therefore, we are presenting reasons why this sudden decision should be reexamined.

1. Protecting the dignity of workers, social rights and labor rights. All legal matters in a society and, thus, the overall regulation of a society, must have the general good in mind, both of the individual and the society as a whole. In this sense, it is of utmost importance to safeguard and promote the dignity of workers, particularly those who are unskilled or semiskilled. Our society abounds with sensational events, spectacular arrests, court trials and fruitless moralizing. Amidst this racket, sometimes it is difficult to hear the voices of “little people,” actual workers who go to work every day, do not cause scandals or belong to some exotic group. Therefore, we raise our voices again for them. We want to be the voice of those who have no voice and we want to make the public, including the social and political elite, more sensitive to the protection of the most vulnerable strata of our population. These include, in a special way, the workers in stores. The public often closes its eyes to the violation of their rights. This, of course, does not mean that we are unaware that other categories of people, especially workers in various industries, are in a grave situation but we think that this category of people is particularly vulnerable, and that through it the society as a whole is threatened.
2. Culture and tradition. First of all, it should be remembered that the idea that lower social classes should be protected from overexploitation is not new. It was born among the Jewish people some 3,000 years ago, with the concept of the Sabbath, the day consecrated to the Lord. It is not permitted to work on that day. With Christianity, this concept entered the circle of Western civilization and became a cultural treasure of the Occident. As such, Sunday was called into question in Europe during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries due to the industrial and political revolutions, mostly owing to liberal and communist ideologies. However, it was soon realized that exhausted workers cannot work well and it is far more profitable to give them adequate rest. Sunday again came under attack at the end of the twentieth century due to the development of the globalization processes. As usual, the first to be attacked were the most vulnerable strata: persons with low educational attainment and women, who make up the majority of workers in the retail sector.
3. Protection of the Croatian society. The decision by the Government to give up trying to regulate an area of public life can have serious long-term consequences upon the overall life of the society. This decision is in no way value neutral. It contributes to the development of a low cultural level, shopping mall culture, which means a great reduction and erosion of the autochthonous Croatian culture. In this way, there is expansion of the consumer mentality, creating the prerequisites for the citizens to fall into debt bondage and, most importantly, it opens the possibility for Croatian citizens in other walks of life to become cheap laborers without sufficient rest. Big business first conquers the weakest fortresses, in this case stores, because they primarily employ women with the least real power in society who are the easiest to replace if they oppose the exploitative policies of employers and legislators, individually or as an organized group. Stores are only a litmus test for the further expansion of deregulation in the protection of work and workers in Croatia, which has already caused and will continue even more so to cause many negative consequences. By defending nonworking Sundays for workers in stores, we are not defending only one particular guild or sector but the culture of Croatian labor and the Croatian society as a whole. That is why we caution that the state must assume responsibility for regulating important areas of public life, of which commerce is only one.
4. Protection of national interests. In addition to the original intention of protecting the dignity of workers, attention should also be given to the protection of legitimate national interests. Store workers work up to 50 hours overtime without pay each month. Inspections are carried out as mere formalities and do not prevent irregularities, and it is not clear how to change this situation. Workers work an average of two weeks and sometimes a whole month without a single day off. This is the reality and actual situation to which people close their eyes. Such workers cannot work at this rhythm their whole lives. This means that it is realistic to expect that a good part of them will become ill and their treatment will be at the expense of the state, i.e., taxpayers. This creates a new contingent of permanently unemployed and unemployable people.
5. Attack on the family. Together with the aforementioned, it is necessary to take one more important fact into account. It concerns a primarily female population of childbearing age, while Croatia is being depopulated. The deregulated rhythm of work for a significant part of the fertile contingent of women is certainly not a measure that is conducive to a rise in the birthrate, but the opposite. The inability of workers, especially mothers, to be with the family at least on Sundays increases the likelihood of the spread of delinquent behavior among young people and increased juvenile violence. Under such circumstances, investment in projects for combating juvenile delinquency is hypocritical and completely futile.
6. Tourism and commerce. In arguing for the reasonableness of such legislation, it is often stated that Croatia is a “tourism country” and stores need to remain open. This argument is false in many respects. Namely, there are other tourism countries that earn much more from tourism than Croatia and have clear regulations on the operations of stores. On the other hand, it is precisely the channeling of consumption to the hospitality industry, still mainly in the hands of Croatian citizens, that would increase revenues from tourism and state revenues from taxes.
7. European legal practice. The ruling by the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia should be mentioned here. Rulings by the Constitutional Court must be respected but it should be noted that this decision is an exception in Europe. For example, the German Constitutional Court ruled on the same issue at the same time but its decision was diametrically opposite to that of the Croatian Constitutional Court. The practice that our court has called into question is the common practice in Austria, France and Great Britain. This ruling is favorable to big business and places workers at a disadvantage. Certainly now, when we are approaching accession to the European Union, a decision that is detrimental to Croatian workers and contrary to European legal practice should be reconsidered, no matter who made it.
8. The importance of unions. Unions have an irreplaceable role in the protection of workers in contemporary society. This is especially true for turbulent periods during changes in the social and political systems or entry into a new association, as is ahead for Croatia. At the present moment, Croatian workers need strong unions that will know how to protect them from the usurpation of major capital during turbulent transitional changes, as is currently happening in the commerce sector and most likely tomorrow in many other sectors of economic life. Therefore, we urge the unions to support Croatian workers even more strongly and wisely, bearing in mind the new context of the European Union in which Croatia will soon find itself.

We hope that the Government of the Republic of Croatia and the opposition in Croatia will see the importance of this issue and ultimately regulate it in accordance with our culture, tradition and, especially, the effective protection of Croatian workers.

In Zagreb, August 1, 2011

†Vlado Košić,
President of the Justitia et Pax Commission of the
Croatian Conference of Bishops