As part of the project “Trade Unions for a Fair Recovery”, results of the survey on the working status of non-standard media workers were presented on 21 of December. There are more and more atypical workers in the media sector, not only journalists, but also photographers, editors, graphic designers, videographers and translators, and this research is the first step of the Croatian Journalists’ Union to understand how atypical workers and freelancers fit into the industry.
The aim of the research Media Freelancers was to gather basic information about the working status of atypical workers whose voices are less heard by employers, legislators and the general public. The results of the research on a sample of 135 respondents were presented by assistant professor from the Center for Media and Communication Research of the Faculty of Political Sciences, Dina Vozab, explaining that atypical work in the media refers to forms of employment that are not permanent and/or part-time. She additionally clarified that it is about short-term contracts, subcontracted work, occasional, part-time and freelance work.
After the presentation of the results, a round table was held, which was moderated by Maja Sever, president of the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists and the European Federation of Journalists, researcher Dina Vozab, Ivana Perić, a journalist from the weekly newspaper Novosti and the Workers’ Rights portal and a member of the feminist collective fAKTIV, Sandra Mlađenović, president of the Association of audiovisual translators and Josipa Klišanin, representative of the Ministry of Labor.
According to the results of the research, 53.3% of media workers have a master’s degree, and the average monthly net salary of the most surveyed ‘atypical’ journalists and photojournalists is from 4,000 to 8,000 Croatian kunas (34.1 percent of them), followed by another large group of 31, 1 percent who are paid from 0 to 4,000 Croatian kunas. Put simply, almost two-thirds of freelancers and freelancers in the Croatian media worked for less than the Croatian average net salary, which, as pointed out in the research, was 7,711 Croatian kunas in June.
Also, there are several other problems that these workers are burdened with. For example, 38.5% of them have been working on an author’s contract or another form of part-time contract for more than a year, and for 29.6% of workers, such a contract was the only way of employment. Namely, the employers did not offer any different contract, which means that they are forced to work as “freelancers”, and since the survey revealed that many of them have been tied to some media companies in this way for several years, we can say that this is covert work.
A surprising answer to the research came from Josipa Klišanin, representative of the Ministry of Labor, who, after listening to the presentation, said that these precarious workers chose this form of employment on their own and that it cannot be that there is no work, because as she says, Croatia imports a large number of foreign workers. Although in the presentation, just before that statement, the opposite data was presented.
Although the lady from the competent ministry came to the round table with good will, with a supportive attitude towards organizing through the trade union, some of her statements revealed that the Ministry of Labor does not deal with the terms concerning atypical workers, which is quite worrying, because Croatia is lagging behind in adapting the legislative framework for these forms of work. Also, what atypical workers in the media mention in the research as an important problem is the lack of social rights, such as the right to sick leave and the right to maternity leave and other rights of an existential nature, which would enable them to lead a somewhat normal life. For example, 33.3% of them cannot solve the housing issue, 32.6% cannot plan a family, 70.4% do not have the conditions to take out a loan, 65.9% say that they will not get a full pension.
As we already know, freelancers and part-timers in the media are scattered and decentralized and it is very difficult to gather them into a collective that would initiate any industrial activity or engage in any form of negotiations with employers. The journalists’ union will try to use the collected data in the fight for the rights of atypical workers. Also, the results will be used to start the negotiation process for the national collective agreement in the media. Based on the feedback received from the survey, we will organize at least two workshops on the topic of raising the capacity of atypical workers and the articulation of the discussion and analysis of the organizational potential of these precarious workers.
Project “Trade Unions for a Fair Recovery” is founded by “European Federation of Journalists”.
