In last two months Trade Union of Croatian Journalists had several activities. As part of the Trade Unions for a Fair Recovery project led by the European Federation of Journalists, members of TUCJ and experts from Organization for workers initiative and democratization (OWID), visited several local newsrooms in Croatia to build newsroom capacities for social dialogue, educate newsroom union commissioners and active union members so that they can directly implement the acquired knowledge and skills and initiate collective bargaining procedures with members within their newsrooms. Workshops with local journalists were held in Sisak, Vukovar, and newsroom Novosti in Zagreb. One of the main obstacles to the recovery and rescue of local media, is insufficient regulation of economic activity. For example, the practice is that many local media are partially owned by local and regional self-government units. In many cases, this also means constant pressure from these units on the editorial policy.
Within the same project TUCJ organized second part of online workshop about collective bargaining in Denmark. Lecturer was external expert, Allan Boye Thulstrup, vice president of Danish Journalist Union. At the end of December, TUCJ will publicly present results of the survey of non-standard forms of work in media and due to that, on this part of the workshop, emphasis was on collective agreements for freelancers.
Also, in Zagreb was held training and round table on Safety four Journalists as part of the European Federation of Journalists project, in which the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists is a partner. It was discussed how the state and how employers can protect journalists. Also, it was mentioned the case of journalist Dušan Miljuš, he was attacked 14 years ago, and the court process is still not over. He pointed out that 5,435 days have passed since the attack on him, but that today there are many more challenges for journalists than when he was attacked because there were no online threats then. Representatives of the Ministries of Culture and Media, Internal Affairs, and Justice pointed out that with changes to the Criminal Code, as well as better cooperation between the police and professional organizations, they made a move towards better safety for journalists.