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BALKANS: Strike Wave Sweeps Serbia
By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Aug 28, 2009 (IPS) - A very hot summer of workers' discontent has taken over Serbia. Some 33,000
people go on strike daily in 40 to 45 firms, according to union statistics. They
are mostly employees of privatised companies who have not been paid salaries
or social and health security benefits for months now.
Since mid-August, protesters have been blocking traffic for hours outside the
offices of the Serbian Privatisation Agency and other government buildings in
Belgrade.
Earlier this month, in central Serbia, police were called in to remove hundreds
of workers who lay down day after day on railway tracks near Lapovo town
150 km south of Belgrade. The now private owner of the company
manufacturing spare parts for automobiles and electricity generation has not
paid them for months.
In a dramatic case, a worker from the southern Serbian textile factory Raska,
254 km south of Belgrade, cut his finger off in public to protest against a new
business owner.
"We are desperate, afraid for our future, betrayed by our new owner," says
Stevan Sreckovic from the Ikarbus bus factory in Zemun. "Ours is one of a
thousand factories throughout Serbia that have been ruined by privatisation,"
he told IPS at a protest last week outside the offices of the Serbian
Privatisation Agency.
Since the ousting of former leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, the Serbian
government has relied heavily on privatisation to revitalise the economy. The
state has received some 2.9 billion euros (3.7 billion dollars) through
privatisation since 2002.
The government has sold 1,828 public firms, and now only 300 remain to be
privatised. That is due by the end of 2009.
The protests this summer point to what workers call "the ugly face of
privatisation". They come after the Privatisation Agency admitted in mid-
August that of the 1,828 privatisation contracts, 472 - almost 25 percent -
have been annulled because the new owners failed to honour the deals.
According to the law on privatisation, the new owners are obliged to pay the
government for their newly acquired companies in up to five instalments.
They are also obliged to compensate workers they cannot keep in line with an
agreement with the Privatisation Agency. The sum mostly ranges from 100 to
800 dollars.
The agency is obliged to monitor developments in newly privatised
companies for two years.
"After that, we practically have no further obligations," head of the
Privatisation Agency Vladislav Cvetkovic told IPS. "Our task is to prepare
privatisation, announce tenders and collect necessary documentation, and to
make this part completely transparent."
Analysts say that the state sold many assets hastily because of an urgent
need for fresh funds. Most sales were done by early 2006.
"The climate for such sales was very good, and the state filled its coffers with
badly needed money," economics professor Milojko Arsic told IPS. "The
money was supposed to go to pension fund, further investment in Serbian
industry, and bring new jobs."
But things have been going wrong over the past year after the end of
supervision by the agency.
In March, machinery from the privatised textile factory Clothing in Leskovac,
282 km south of Belgrade, was taken by its Cypriot owner to Romania earlier
this year.
In May, workers from the textile factory 7. Juli in the southern town
Kursumlija learnt that their machinery was gone. The Serbian owner
apparently sold it abroad as scrap.
"New owners refraining from fulfilling their obligations, such as revitalising
production, paying regular salaries and health insurance to workers is
surfacing now," analyst Slobodan Kostic told IPS. "This is bringing people to
the streets and is leading to strikes."
International consortiums from tax paradises are often involved in purchases.
Kostic says many assets were sold to people with a murky past and with
murky money.
Several heavy industry machinery and textile factories have been sold to
consortiums located in Cayman Islands, Cyprus or Virgin Islands, only later to
be made sites for luxurious apartment blocks or shopping malls.
The agency says merely that new owners did not meet their obligations. "It is
not our job to control financial resources," says Cvetkovic.
A major tycoon sought earlier this year to buy the industrial zone of Belgrade
harbour and turn it into a marina to be surrounded by lavish apartment
blocks and high rises. Public outcry stopped the sale.
Amidst mounting speculation that privatisation was not regular in many
cases, Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic (not related to Vladislav
Cvetkovic), who was head of the Privatisation Agency in 2003 and 2004,
admitted to reporters last week that "by the end of that period we became
aware that something was wrong." He did not elaborate.
"I will personally insist that all the contracts that have been annulled be
checked," he added. But to many workers this is not enough.
The striking workers have their critics. "What we hear more often now among
workers' demands in strikes is calls for the state to take over their
companies," Miroslav Prokopijevic from the Free Market Centre told IPS. The
Centre is one of the leading Serbian NGOs backing a free market economy.
"That sounds like the times of socialism (the Serbian and former Yugoslav
version of communism), when the state took care of everything, and provided
lifelong guarantee of employment, but those times cannot come back," he
said. (END)
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