Arms Manufacturers Take to the Streets

"Before, it would have been unthinkable that workers of an arms manufacturing plant didn't have a thing to eat", says Zoran Nedeljkovic, president of the Independant Syndicate of the Workers of the Fixed Purpose Manufacturing Plant (FNP) of Crvena Zastava in Kragujevac, tells VREME. Nobody shares the optimism of the plant's director of many years, Colonel Vukasin Filipovic. At the moment of the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991, he announced that the institution from Kragujevac had, during its 140 year-long existance, outlived various governments, and shall do so with this one as well. During the strike meetings, Filipovic was called a "theif" and much worse, was booed on a few occasions and finally thrown out of the plant on Wednesday morning along with the other directors, after he had tried to shut the gates and send all workers on paid holiday (receiving 60% of their wages). The situation during the night between Tuesday and Wednesday was tense: There were whispers of police reinforcements that were to arrive from other towns, of stronger military police forces and "special" forces who were allegedly lined-up and ready for action. "At five o' clock in the morning on Tuesday it was announced that we were all to be sent off on paid leave", says Nedeljkovic. "The third shift was thrown out of the plant and they wanted to shut the gates. Since that didn't count for members of the Syndicate Committee and workers who are with them, we were putting people into the plant that morning in that way. There was no resistance nor incidents and the managers didn't put in an appearance." Instead of locking the plant, the directors literally found themselves on the street, although the metaphorical meaning isn't excluded. The workers of FNP are so angry that they have threatened to enter the Municipal Assembly of Kragujevac. The local committee of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) made matters worse by sending out a thoughtless announcement in which the strike was termed "illegal" and alludes to "destruction". The regime papers and television have also incited the fury of the arms manufacturers by pushing their protest to the margins. The bitter workers have commenced a hunger strike on Tuesday at 3 pm in the plant premises, and they were joined by a group of members of the automobile plant syndicate in front of the gates . The director Filipovic, "respecting the gravity of such a decision", demanded in a letter to the Syndicate Committee their "recall", but failed to meet with their understanding: the answer was "we shall starve until all three demands are fulfilled: the dismissal of the managers, payments of the wages for June and July as well as of the subsidies for this and last year and the solving the status of FNP". The workers claim that they want to work, that the country of FR Yugoslavia, as the successor of SFRJ's (Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) continuity owes them 68 million Dollars (FNP's two year production at the best of times) from weapons exported before the embargo to Cuba, Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique etc. and that it is impossible to maintain the military industry in such a state.

Political parties are acting in diverse manners. "There is one thing I don't understand," says Nedeljkovic. "First SPS condemns our protest, and then the League of the Communist Movement of Yugoslavia (SKPJ) and Yugoslav United Left (JUL) start supporting us. The Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) tried to turn their support into political marketing, but soon afterwards they dropped such an attitude and have henceforth acted correctly, like the other parties." This strike in no way agrees with the Socialists due to timing in connection to the election. Even if money was to be found to temporarily mend Crvena Zastava, time is needed for it to be invested and to bring some tangible results. Due to that the clumsy treatment of this strike by the local SPS won't help a single bit in the local elections on November 3. The workers and the syndicate fear something else: that the ruined weapons plant will be quickly "privatized" for meager funds, since director Filipovic has already talked about "privatization in accordance with the existing orientation". The class consciousness, as it was once called, is on the rise in Kragujevac: "These workers are no longer the Zastava workers who had been led to the streets in 1991 to overthrow Ante Markovic, after which they received 800 German Marks each and bought themselves Samsung television sets, these people are different," says an anonymous observer from Kragujevac.