The Trade Union of Croatian Journalists is launching a new project in cooperation with the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). COVID-19 emphasized the importance of social dialogue, and effective social dialogue must be at the heart of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, which requires strong unions!
The ETUC and EFJ have decided to allocate at the national level funds for capacity building approved by European Commission. It aims to assist trade unions in building digital trade unionism, developing digital skills and trade union tools, which will strengthen their organizational capacity communication with members and their role in national institutions of social dialogue. In general, this initiative aims to support unions in developing national recovery plans that ensure secure jobs with decent wages and conditions and activities that address media freedom, democracy, corruption, and whistleblower protection in Europe, particularly the Balkan region.
Strengthening the capacity of Union
As a part of the project, the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists will try to strengthen its basic activities – strengthening the capacity to protect workers’ rights through collective agreements. That is why our first concrete goal is to start talks and form a team for negotiations on the national collective agreement, which is one of the main goals of the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists’. We will organize several meetings with partners in this process, the development of strategic guidelines, and a meeting with representatives of social dialogue partners. The second goal of this project is to start the negotiation process in 5 media houses in Croatia; we will organize meetings with trade union branches in Croatia and workshops for the training of negotiators. Third, we will continue to bring together freelancers; we hope this project will strengthen our branch of freelancers and atypical media workers. In addition, the project provided funding for workshops with experts on this issue. Finally, we intend to prepare a strategy and plans to protect freelance journalists and atypical workers in the media sector.
Union kitchen
Through the project, we will raise the visibility of trade unions by recording the video podcast Trade Union Kitchen. In addition, we will talk to prominent individuals from our trade union and media environment. Finally, we will host journalists and other participants in our social life and discuss protecting workers’ rights and the importance of protecting independent journalism.
We believe that this project is just the beginning of further cooperation and work of our organizations and a step forward in strengthening the capacity and activities of our organizations.