An employee of the Zagreb Clinical Hospital Center expressed deep outrage at the current severance pay system in Croatia’s leading healthcare institution.

His dissatisfaction stems from the fact that workers retiring after 40 years of dedicated service receive the identical amount as those who have spent only a short time in the system. According to the statements of the outraged employee to Dnevnik.hr, this practice nullifies decades of loyalty and contribution to the hospital because the amount of approximately 2,000 euros is paid out linearly, regardless of length of service or the effort invested throughout an entire working life.

This situation creates a sense of deep injustice among the system’s 'veterans', who believe that longevity of service should be more clearly reflected in the final financial reward upon retirement.

Legal basis and calculation according to collective agreements

The president of the KBC Zagreb Union, Tanja Leontić, explained that the rules on severance pay are defined by collective agreements that apply to public and civil services. Although public services have specific provisions, in practice the more favorable rules from the agreement for civil servants and employees are often applied.

According to the current regulations, an employee retiring is entitled to severance pay in the amount of 2.5 salary calculation bases. Since the new base amount as of February 1 is 1,004.87 euros gross, the total severance amount before taxation reaches slightly more than 2,500 euros. It is important to emphasize that this calculation is based on a fixed number of bases, which explains why length of service at retirement does not play a role in increasing the final amount.

The difference between retirement and business-related dismissals

There is a significant difference in the calculation of severance pay depending on the reason for termination of employment, which often confuses employees. While severance pay for retirement is fixed, the Basic Collective Agreement provides different conditions in cases where the employer terminates the contract and the reason is not the employee’s culpable conduct. In such scenarios, an employee with 30 or more years of service with the same employer is entitled to preferential severance pay in the amount of at least 65% of the average monthly gross salary paid in the three months before termination for each completed year of service. It is precisely this difference in the treatment of years of service in regular retirement compared with termination of the employment contract that creates a perception of inequality among employees who believe that a similar proportional model should also be applied to their deserved pensions.

The legal frameworks in the Republic of Croatia clearly distinguish the social function of severance pay upon retirement from compensation for job loss due to business reasons. While the first model serves as one-time assistance in the transition to a new life status, the second directly values the years spent with the same employer. The conflict between the strict legal interpretation of collective agreements and the subjective sense of fairness of long-serving workers points to the need for a potential revision of labor legislation. Without introducing gradation that would reward loyalty to the system, institutions such as KBC Zagreb will continue to face a decline in the morale of those who have spent their entire working lives on the front lines of the healthcare system.