Danijela Vukoša, from the SDP Zadar City Council, sent a letter of support to the employees of the Zadar cafeteria during the strike.

“Velida, Beti, Dušanka, Tina, Tanja, Giovana, Nela, Ivanka, Mara, Jadranka, Vesna, Sanda, Rosa, Danijela, and Sanja,

You have shown that you can handle anything, but injustice and disrespect you will not. With this strike, you have proven that you have to fight for your rights yourselves because, unfortunately, no one else will do it for you. You are fighting and demanding ‘only’ what workers, both men and women, won 120 years ago and what the state, with its regulations, guarantees today in 2020—the right to collective bargaining. Just that.

With this strike, you—the cooks, the assistant cooks, the servers on the line—showed courage by not allowing Rector Dijana Vican, prof. dr. sc., to decide on your rights as if you didn’t exist. Even though you have back pain, you have shown that you have a spine.

By invalidating your rights, Rector Vican has shown that you are invisible to her. It is because the walls of the University block her view. She showed that the Union is invisible and unnecessary to her—the same Union of which she had been a prominent member from 1991 to 2000. Why was Rector Vican in the Union for almost 10 years if she doesn’t know that collective bargaining comes from Labour Law?

The University’s thick rulebooks and statutes certainly state that it should be a propagator of progressive ideas and a protector of equality between people. However, with her position on the right to collective bargaining, Rector Vican is leading the University backwards.

You have shown that Union Association and Workers’ Solidarity are the only way in the fight for our rights.”

Danijela Vukoša, SDP Zadar City Council

The letter was originally published on the website Zadarski.hr on October 19, 2020.