That foreign companies are taking profits out of Croatia is not news, nor does it upset anyone too much, but when they convince us that they cannot give us higher salaries because we are lowly productive, then the hair on the head of the workers stands on end, and the directors get bonuses. Because according to this logic, it turns out that the low productivity is solely the fault of the workers, and not at all the directors. Or as we used to derisively call them in the former state, techno-managers. Which workers' councils dismissed if they did not achieve the set business plans, for the simple reason that the definition of a company at that time was "an organization of associated labor". Enough with the smart ones.
When the Federal Statistical Office of the SFRY announced in 1962 that the salary ratio of directors to workers in certain companies was 20:1, this so enraged the then president of the federation that he gave a speech in Split, in front of 150 citizens gathered on the Riva, dedicated exclusively to the workers. Tito said at the time, among other things: “The directors cannot be blamed alone, nor can a general campaign be waged against them. We have very good directors, excellent people, excellent comrades who have never stopped demanding a salary higher than that set for them by the work collectives. But there are also such directors who were looking to make a living as much as possible and who did not pay attention to what the collective decided. Such a director connected with some managers from local authorities and shook up his company. This needs to stop. The work collectives should use all their rights to organize production as properly as possible and carry out internal distribution, i.e. determine salaries.”
He also spoke about the “mistakes of management people,” saying that by that he “implies indirect responsibility for what others did,” that is, the Party’s responsibility. Tito’s speech dedicated to workers, in which he announced a showdown with greedy directors, lasted three and a half hours. Today, we are lucky if directors dedicate three and a half minutes to us. Although Tito’s speech did not change the ratio of salaries between techno-managers and workers, he at least acknowledged that the disparity between salaries, as well as injustice in “internal distribution,” exists. If we dare to ask such a question today, we get the answer that we, the workers, are lowly productive and uncompetitive, while management’s responsibility is not mentioned at all. Let alone the prime minister or president giving us speeches about it and looking for the guilty among their ranks.
Today's techno-managers are not even close to socialist directors "who are looking to make as much money as possible". According to data obtained by the Independent Croatian Unions, the annual salary of the president of the board in one Croatian bank is 360 thousand euros, while in the banking industry, according to data from the Union of Banking and Financial Employees, 55 percent of workers work for a salary lower than the average, so the greed ratio is 23,07:1 (we took the amount of 1.300 euros for a salary lower than the average, which is even too optimistic, which means that a worker in banking earns 15.600 euros a year). By the way, when we insisted on which bank it was, the Independent Unions did not want to tell us, although it does not matter at all, because one does not know whether to laugh or cry. Or go to Ireland. The union calculated that raising the salaries of banking employees by only 500 euros gross, which would bring the lowest salaries to the average, would cost banks only 6,5 percent of their annual profit, which in 2024 could reach as much as 1,6 billion euros.
And while the Party has thrown itself into the dust in front of the working people, today's employers have much more room for maneuver, so they first blame the state for everything - both for the increase in public sector wages and for the increase in the minimum wage, and then the workers. Thus, the state and the workers are the main culprits for inflation - the state, because it increased people's wages, and the workers because they spend that increased wage. We are also guilty of low competitiveness, whatever that means, and we are especially guilty of low productivity, while at the same time foreign companies are extracting billions of euros of profit right under our noses. The result of all this is that we have "killed" the middle class, and the lower class is growing more and more, partly because of shamefully low wages and even more shamefully explained reasons for why they are low, and partly because of the import of low-skilled foreign workers who fill low-paid jobs anyway. Too smart.
Bonus video:
