Zagreb, 22 July 2009 – It is almost two months now that the shops are again, following the decision of the Constitutional Court, open on Sundays. Did the work on Sundays increase the employment in commercial sector? The statistics have namely shown that in the first three months of this year 39,000 jobs (in shops) were lost. President of the Commercial Trade Union of Croatia Dragica Mišeljić, still feels that the prohibition of Sunday work did not cause job losses.

- Our position is the same as it was when the Act on prohibition of Sunday work entered into force, and that is that the non-work on Sundays would not influence business operations in a significant way. The unfortunate circumstance is of course the crisis so we cannot distinguish between the consequences of the crisis and the consequences of non-work on Sundays.

However, the data on employment in commercial sector from 2004 till March this year show that those job losses are not related with Sunday. At least not in the stated proportion. Employment trend in that period was positive, in 2004 there were 212,500 employed and at the end of March this year 235,000. These are the total figures. It can be seen though that despite this general growth, employment was decreasing in certain sectors - 10 percent or 4,443 workers in trade, and 32,500 workers less in legal entities. For this period of 2009 we cannot speak about dismissals because in most cases those were fixed-term employment contracts. Formally looking those were not dismissals, but practically they were, said Mišeljić.