Roasted ox at the Belgrade’s Ada Ciganlija. A reveille at Bojcin forest. Bean festival at Marks and Engel’s square.
This May-day reveille again passed without spectacular caste parties at above mentioned places at which, during the last century, the working class proudly demonstrated its power and hold over the government, property and the Party.
The government, self management and the Party have long been put away to the dustbin of history, but the society and the working class are still trying to gather up the debris and patch up the existing holes.
What is the state of the working class in Serbia today? Does it exists after 10 (20?) years of transition? What is its caste conscience? Is the domestic employer better or the foreign one? Does it still dream of its own country and power over its property? Can it come out in massive numbers to the streets and show its anger? Is it really capable of being an equal participant of the social-economical dialogue and an accomplice in the social consensus needed for the country to get out of a crisis?
Ranka Savic, the president of the Association of the free and independent unions, decidedly claims that Serbia doesn’t have a working class nor does it have unions. On our question why, she answers:
“Because of the neoliberal politics which has been applied since the beginning of the democratic changes and because of the corrupt unions. The unions and employers cannot take the money from the government, but for the last two years they have taken 168 million dinars from the Pension and Disability Insurance Fund for the development and advancement of the social dialogue. If the government is giving funds from the budget to its social partners, then the government has them in its hands. There is no social dialogue there. The most critical period for the unions in Serbia was two years before the crisis, and now this kind of loss of jobs just brings them back to the public eye’’.
Mladen Lazic, a sociologist and a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade recently published a book ‘’ Waiting for capitalism’’ in which he dedicated a whole chapter to the working class in Serbia (“Fragmenting of the working class”). The chapter was first written as a comparison of the working class in Serbia and Croatia.
“There is a distinct fragmentation in both countries. The union fragmentation of today only upgraded itself on the atomization from the socialist period. As for the judicial part of it, the government is acting quite casual about it, it prefers to have a loose union scene, and that you never find out which one is representative and which one isn’t. It’s a chaotic situation in which there are no rules. If there were, you could never have a small group of workers organizing a strike in the “Jura” company, and trying to present itself as a union seeking some union rights. Legally, that shouldn’t be happening. There is no mechanism in Serbia that would integrate the working class. The only thing that can mobilize it is populism. Before it was a national populism, but today it is social. But I don’t see which political party could use it for a real social insurgency.
Mirko Todorovic, the owner of the clothing company “Todor” from Vrnjacka Banja, says that his employees have its own union organization which doesn’t belong to the official union centrals. Otherwise, he finds that the industrial culture from the period of self-management has been preserved and that now it is a corrector for the young people who are just starting work, and that they are ashamed when they see how the older employees are working.
“The working class is mainly made of people in their fifties. Nobody in Vrnjacka Banja today would come to a training course on sewing, maybe just 10 girls whose parents made them do it because they failed at some management college. They usually stay for three or four days, so after five days you have one left that actually wants to work, but she doesn’t have any productivity. There is a job vacancy for a mechanic for two years now. I can understand if you work for two to three months and then leave, but I cannot understand a young man that works for seven days and then quits and says “This is not for me”. And that is the working class that is dominant today”.
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Ten years after its privatization, the concrete factory “Lafarz” proved that a worker in Serbia can have the same top working results at the “domestic field” as he would have if he was working in Germany and France, because you have the same model of organization in Serbia. When it was bought, the factory from Beocin had a little over 2000 workers which were producing 2500 tons of clinker a month.
Then “Lafarz” spent a 100 million Euros on modernization of the equipment and protection of the environment, so today there are 340 workers and they produce 4800 tons. Their average earnings are 79000 dinars, and they get a bonus at the end of each year (“the thirteen paycheck”).
Petar Stojanovic, the main locksmith in the Maintenance sector of the factory says he is satisfied with the amount of money he makes, but he doesn’t want to say just how much that is.
“Believe me, I am very satisfied. I can live very well. At the end of the year we even get a bonus which is defined by the main indicators with which we influence the production result. Among all, by a higher safety. For example, I will receive a full bonus if I report more unknown and unsafe situations. Our union team negotiates on the wagers and also it agrees with the employer on the collective contract with which we are very satisfied”, says Stojanovic.
What will happen to the workers the companies owned by domestic entrepreneurs? Mirko Todorovic talks about that: “I do not sleep today. Big and conscientious businessmen cannot sleep tight. I am honestly worried about the low paychecks of the workers, and that I am going to have to cut down the number of employees. Now I have to start selling some property in order to compensate for the lack of capital. But, there is a limit to it. I have to close stores in some towns”.
It is not easy having 500 workers today.
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