Belgrade Conference: Factory and Workers Day
by - 18.07.2004 13:39
DRAFT
this is a proposal of the topics on which worked workers of ex-reanult
factory, belgium and our collective.
those lines are an invitation for the workers from europe and post-yugoslavia to confirm or not their participation into the debate that concern them in a first lines. not their "representatives" - topic specialist or activist's theoreticians, who are of course all welcome to join the debates.
DMB Rakovica
The International People's Global Action Conference, July 2004
DMB Rakovica
Participants: workers from the international and local factories of Belgium, England, Greece, France, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovenia, Bosnian Federation, Croatia.
1. Labour conditions, workers' social position in the period of transition;
2.Workers' rights in the process of privatisation; workers buying the shares the biggest robbery at the end of the twentieth century or the new phase of the social justice? Have the existence of the working personnel's shares been successful in "Renault, vilvoorde, Belgium²? Do working personnel shares guarantee employment (prevents factory from shutting-down), or is it the way of putting even more pressure on the workers in order to make them more industrious for the organization?
Does the idea of having the right to shares incorporate the idea of
organization leaders having the exclusive right to place veto, or is it the idea of having the right to shares real, uncompromised right?
Who is really in charge of bringing the decision about factory shutting
down, the shareholder or the leader? Is it wrong not to create unity of all shareholders in the sense of restructuring (by shares) of all the
participants of the political and labour struggles?
Workers from the Belgian "Caterpillar"are experiencing the aforementioned
problems at the moment; since 80% of the workers are foreigners, does that
mean that one day, before they had gone "home², they would sell their shares under low prices? Does worker loses (one way or the other, namely: always) in his shares? Instead of conclusion: worker as a shareholder or not?
3.Examples of workers' organizing and struggles, comparative experiences:
Yugoslavia and Western Europe, workers' struggles before and after! Exchange of experiences and realization of struggle strategy.
4. Are there today trade-unionistes? Trade-union, that is us? Or trade-union are always the others?
5. Europe and the workers.
Will the new European countries become the sky of Europe? Will Europe, i.e. the European patronage in these new countries establish old and surpassed technologies and inadequate wages, while actually using and dislocating local reproductive materials, or will the new country members become members with equal rights, and their workers people with equal rights like the others European workers?
6. The old and the new: does the idea of "new"for the workers belonging
to European suburbs sound "old"for the workers and female workers of
Schengen?
Is their common aim today really the creation of something revolutionary and TRULY INNOVATIVE in the sphere of social justice? What would be the
"innovation of the new?"
7. Self-menagement , yes or no? How we should consider the fact
that many of the working people of today's Europe (and even further, all the way to the Institute for Self-menagement that was established According to SFRJ Model in Tokyo) have once seen in the self-menagement that existed in the SFRJ promise of the new, together with the attempt of establishing radical, new model of private property over the production elements?
Conclusion: what went wrong? If we could go back, where would we start, what would be kept? The example of winning and unsuccessful workers' experiences and memories from the self-menagement period from SFRJ.
8) To be continued (the next round of suggestions made by the workers from Rakovica)
***
flexible workers
flexible work and flexibility: most of metal and car industry, as well
textile and food industry european workers, but also fast-food temporary jobbers point like one of the biggest actual fraud of the patronat: in the theory it is 7 hours x 5days= 35 hours, but in reality it is 6 days per week x 10-12 hours, the toilet and break time not any more counted in the work-time, the hours over 35 are not paid and the patronat has a right to give a free day whenever it arrange them, but not a person concerned ; flexibility in the various kind of jobs that one person has to effectuate; in the factories the oldest worker don't accept the flexibility but the young and illegal ones yes, which means that the young and illegal accept nowadays all kind of miserable pays : in one word flexibility is a disastrous capitulation and step back on XX century hardly obtained, basic workers wrights.
the topics about precarious work-
How can precarious workers organize?
- What answers there are to precariousness?
- How work has changed?
- How we can get rid of work?
are of corse welcome in the debate with the factory and manual workers who how i see it, often paradoxaly donıt have time to think about free time, or about transformation of work/labour materiality . that is the reason also that they are , generally, very hardly leaving their traditional fixation towards the production tools even if those are completely dilapidated. thatıs what some no more employed workers wont to point also out , in our debate.
conclusion: definitely crossing of ( all type of) work and non-work
experiences are more than welcome in ourıs , but generally in all political debates dealing with the work conditions nowadays.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
occupied factory in Zrenjanin
a report 18.07.2004 13:43
A group of activist from DSM! network were greeted today by more then a hundred workers in occupied factory of "Jugoremedija" in the city of Zrenjanin.
I will try to sketch a historical background of this courageous struggle.
Namely, 280 of 357 workers of "Jugoremedija" have been on strike since December 27th last year. Personal security of the director of "Jugoremedija", Aleksandar Jovanovic, inflicted severe injuries on a number of strikers. They even used trained dogs. One woman was badly injured, 2 women have dislocated arms and one worker received a blow to the head. In an incredible scene, women workers had laied down infront of the security vans, and defened their factory from the personal army of the director. Workers had locked the factory and director cannot enter any more, while the confused "security" had left the scene.
On May 18, 2004, the Privatization Agency finally did initiated the process of cancelling the sales contract because it violates the law. The process has begun because the guarantee conditions and contractual obligations were not respected. All those responsible for the violations will be "brought to justice" and the sale contract will be cancelled in court.
The company entered privatization in 2002, and was eventually bought by the Macedonian Jaka 80.
According to the general manager of the company, the new owners "have been facing obstruction since the very first day by shareholders and workers who had obstructed the previous management as well, as some senior workers put it."
"These are remnants of the communist self-management system in which workers were allowed to meddle in everything" corporation PR said.
The workers who are "allowed to meddle in everything", and who even dared to fight for their own factory, accused Radovanovic of harassing employees and transferring them to harder jobs, because of which at the end of 2003 they launched a general strike. In addition, they were displeased with their collective contract and salaries.
Since the factory was closed for two weeks, Radovanovic made a deal with the meddlesome strikers: he would reinstate the previous collective contract and raise salaries by 12 percent.
But the problems did not end there. The new owner, Jovica Stefanovic, entered the factory with security personnel on Jan. 1, 2004, and workers barricaded themselves in the mess hall, where they stayed until the strike ended.
At the time, Radovanovic called this "a rebellion, a state of anarchy and a taking of the factory by force, which warrants intervention, which is why professional security has been brought in, to guard it in the future as well."
Jugoremedija has 4,357 shareholders, who last year received dividends although they were rather small. This year they were supposed to receive a total of 40 million dinars at an assembly scheduled for May 11, but the meeting was postponed because of the arrival of the Securities Commission representatives.
At an auction held on Sept. 9 2002, Jaka 80, in which Nis businessman Jovica Stefanovic- a close friend of the former Prime Minister- has a majority stake, bought 41.93 percent of Jugoremedija.
After a neck and neck race with the Ljubljana-based Lek, Jaka 80 eventually- nobody know how- succeeded in buying the remaining portion of Jugoremedija`s social-owned stock, initially priced at 175 million dinars, for 959.50 million dinars.
The contract obliged the buyer to invest 360 million dinars in the next 30 months, 50 percent of which within 24 months.
A leader of the rebellion ( or the representative of the group of small shareholders, if u prefer) Zdravko Deuric, told "Clean Hands" that "The view that we do not have an economic interest in Jugoremedija because we control less than 10 percent of Jugoremedija is absolutely wrong. Our association numbers over 2,200 people, and we control about 40 percent of the factory which can easily be proven. Obviously, some other interests at work here".
That not everything was actually is in order was indicated at the end of May by the Anti-Corruption Council, which announced that the buyer of Jugoremedija, Jaka 80, had failed to meet its contractual obligations.
"The Serbian Share Fund should not have signed the contract before the bank guarantee was presented, and should not have let the buyer into the company before he met all his obligations," the Anti-Corruption Council said.
Workers are still in the factory. They will remain there until the process of canceling the sales contract is not finished. If there is no result this week they will organize and come in buses to Belgrade. They have accepted to participate in forthcoming PGA conference in Belgrade in July. Hopefully with other workers from Serbia with whom they would like to start to discuss a common plan of how to organize a collective struggle against privatization.