Appeasing the Poor

Many people in Nis claim Ilic was in Belgrade for consultations all through the strikes while others say he was hiding in the local SPS headquarters in the best guarded street in the city. The main Nis police precinct is located just 50 meters from the SPS building which also houses the local bureaus of Politika and Ekspres dailies. That along with a bakery owned by Branko Todorovic (Ilic's best friend and deputy mayor) was the best guarded building in the city while the workers protest was ongoing. The heavy security fit in completely with what Mayor Stojan Randjelovic was telling the strikers: "We will take all necessary legal measures against anyone who tries to block the city."

The strikes were started by employees at the Angropromet trade company who spent two weeks asking for their salaries (they haven't been paid since December) and help with the company's 23 million dinar debt. The local authorities didn't seem to pay much attention to the 1,600 Angropromet strikers whose company was the city's main supplier and now owns 250 mainly empty shops. It's a company that has spent the longest time dying and many in the city have their eye on the shops just in case the authorities don't step in to help. There were even suggestions that the salespeople on strike were all "thieves".

The social dissatisfaction and hopelessness in the company lasted too long and some 10 days later other companies remembered that they hadn't been paid in months, that their children are hungry and that they planned to go on strike in March but didn't because of the SPS congress.

When Electronic Industry (EI) workers (13,000) took to the streets on May 8 along workers from Min, the strike became a very serious cause for concern by the authorities despite the silence of the state media. Although all the strikers were asking for their minimum wage of 130 dinars and promises of work, the fact that 20,000 workers were on strike in Nis, the socialist bastion, at the same time that their counterparts in Belgrade were preparing to show their support for Avramovic was very alarming.

Serbian ministers came to Nis (Srdjan Nikolic to calm the Angropromet strike) along with SPS officials (Slavica Djukic-Dejanovic, Bosko Perosevic to see what Ilic was going to do about the strike) but none of them had the courage to face the strikers.

The strikes were staged every day till about 2:00 p.m. Most of the strikers were in a hurry to get back to their villages in the afternoon to work their land so they could survive. There were jokes that said the strike was half a workers rebellion and half a farmers uprising. Most of the support voiced at the protests was for Avramovic with calls for him not to leave and not start printing money and the city authorities were booed for not securing money for salaries. Most of the strikers who talked to reporters insisted on anonymity fearing reprisals and convinced that most of what they say won't be published by anyone. Opposition activists just monitored the strike.

Conspiracy theories were abundant from the start of the strike. The local authorities tried to avoid their responsibility and blamed the opposition which hasn't done too well in the city and whose existence is ignored by the media. Some opposition circles said the whole thing is the result of a conflict among the socialists themselves or that the workers were pushed into a strike to demand money from Avramovic. They mentioned the fact that most union leaders are either SPS or JUL members. Some theories said the strike was supposed to be an attempt to exert pressure on Belgrade to come up with the money to reconstruct the Nis economy. The more so since Nis has not had a powerful representative in Belgrade for a long time.

There might be a grain of truth in all those conspiracy theories. If they didn't organize everything the socialists certainly had nothing against a little pressure on Belgrade for money at first since Ilic has said he intends to build an opera and ballet in the city as well as a lot of other buildings. Central Nis has seen a virtual city of boutiques spring up full of smuggled goods at prices the strikers could only dream of.

Everyone who took to the streets denied any political motivation and mainly mentioned two things: hunger and a feeling of no prospects for themselves and their children. EI employee Zorica Seferovic said she and her co-workers were practically pushed into the street: "When you don't get paid for months the only thing you can do is start smuggling. I have two children, my husband works for the department stores which are also on strike. We are not scum; we are serious family people who have been forced onto the street although our place is in the factory."

"If they're saying we have party affiliations, report us as the party of the hungry, humiliated, naked and indebted," Milomir Mladenovic (EI) told VREME and added that the dismissal of EI director Bora Mitrovic is just someone's effort to calm the workers. He insisted that the strike should continue until the reasons why "we have become so impoverished" are disclosed. Asked how he and his family survived without a salary for five months, Mladenovic took off the shoes that were falling apart on his feet and showed torn stockings.

Several strikers voiced doubts that anything would be published about them. "We know who in Belgrade won't let you publish," one of them said. "Here in Nis it's Mile Ilic. If you report this you lose your license. Hungry workers don't exist for TV."

To the state media EI was a holding company with certain problems and one of the best companies in Serbia in which "production is rising". During the strike VREME learned that the company's official debt stood at 100 million dinars, that just 10-15% of its capacities were operating and that even the biggest possible financial injection would bring salaries up to only 200 dinars. The EI collapse includes the departure of a large number of experts or the fact, reported by a newspaper that did not cover the strike, that EI TV sets are several hundred DEM more expensive than Sony.

Min strikers told a similar story. Several thousand people in the company were declared surplus workers and about 4,000 are on permanent paid leave. But their director is hanging on firmly because he's a member of the SPS main board.

Ljubisa Mitrovic, professor at the Nis school of philosophy, JUL coordinator for the city and JUL directorate member, said everything that happened in the city was the consequence of decades of problems and delays in introducing serious economic changes and reforms. Mitrovic said the war delayed the problem even more, problems piled up and workers lost their patience. In his statement on the strike, Mitrovic stressed many things that point to failures by the local authorities. Obviously SPS-JUL relations aren't that good here. JUL members in Nis meet in the local theater because the local SPS board is in no hurry to secure offices for them.

In his talk with VREME, Mitrovic mentioned "Mafiacracy" which has been robbing the economy and undermining the system. Asked why all this is happened in Nis and not some other place in Serbia where economic giants are also facing collapse, Mitrovic said: "The easiest explanation is the story of political conspiracies. But that is also false. After Belgrade, the biggest concentration of factory workers and the urban middle class which has dropped to the bottom in Serbia is in Nis. These aren't just protests by workers but also by their families. At the same time, a class of nouveau riche has risen and are ruthlessly digging into the urban environment and getting rich quick. I criticized the city program of commercial communal services and the spending of money for shopping centers while the most serious problems haven't been solved."

After several days of protests, the strike by hungry workers lost its strength. Angropromet workers who were the first to protest, went back to work selling only bread and milk after a faxed promise from Belgrade that their minimum wage for December is ready (100 dinars) to be collected. Most of them don't believe their company will ever get well. Min workers also got some money and their director Milovan Krivokapic told Tanjug that the planned production will stand at 450 million dinars with just 50 million needed to get it started. EI workers were left last and they got a new director and salaries for December. They plan to freeze their strike for a while to see if the rest of their demands will be met.

The authorities seem to have used the break in the strike last weekend to calm down the protest with a combination of blackmail, threats and promises. Many union activists were called in for "informative talks" and companies were pitted against each other. Min strikers were told the EI workers betrayed them when their demands were met. When 10,000 EI workers marched to Min that day they found the factory gates locked and some surprised Min employees who told them they thought their protest had ended. In other companies, workers were given 100 dinars each just to stay calm.

University dean Mira Krstovic told VREME she was surprised by the fact that workers from several companies went on strike at the same time. So far, she said, everyone looked after only their own interests and the authorities used that to keep them confronted.

One of the epilogues of the two strikes is that some 30,000 people have been excused from paying their communal and other bills indefinitely. For many people that, along with their back pay, will be enough to keep their minds off a strike.

The authorities are doing what they can and they seem to know what the strikers are thinking. They'll only pay what they have to and by election time they'll think of something.

The Media

Mira Krstovic is an analyst of the local media in Nis. She said the city has five private TV stations all of them airing the main state TV news every evening. There are another three TV stations. Private radios are also very careful not to get involved in politics but that didn't stop them from covering the SPS congress.