Hungry Strikers Start a Hunger Strike

"Your example is spreading all over Serbia. Yesterday the workers of Teleoptik have commenced a hunger strike. The president of the Independent and the head of the Autonomous Syndicate are starving together," said Dragan Milovanovic on September 9, president of the Independent Metalworkers Syndicate of Serbia in front of the City Assembly in Kragujevac to the workers of the Fixed Purpose Plant (FNP) Crvena Zastava who were gathered there. This is their seventeenth protest since August 19 in which 96 workers and members of the Syndicate and Workers Committee spent eleven days on a hunger strike. In the meantime, from September 3 to 6, some 25 workers of the department store Jugocentar (former Merkator) in Belgrade also went on a hunger strike, and the Independent Syndicate of the Motor Vehicles and Tractor Industry (IMT) "Solidarity" is announcing the same intention.

"Workers here have to go on a hunger strike," says Zoran Nedeljkovic, (better known as Meda for VREME), president of the Independent Syndicate of the Fixed Purpose Plant. "It isn't very difficult for the workers since they are usually hungry. In Serbia today, thousands and thousands of workers are on a hunger strike but it isn't called by that name; people simply don't have anything to eat."

"We talked, talked and talked with the former director Filipovic, with the municipal authorities, Dzadic and god knows who else with," says fifty- year old Milorad Jelic for VREME who starved all of the eleven days. "We even wrote to Milosevic. Believe me, we have been trying for two years to keep things out of the streets and to solve everything in our own back yard. However, when we decided to go on a hunger strike, that meant that talking didn't help anymore."

"The first day of the strike somehow passed peacefully," says Zivan Miladinovic, a worker, as he explains what it feels like to go on a hunger strike. "We spent time getting to know each other, we didn't think of our families, food... The second day, the third day - that was the breaking point - when you wake up in the middle of the night, your stomach is rumbling, and you are dreaming of food. I strictly dreamt of roast chicken, how I was eating white meat, since that has always been my favorite. I wake up then and light a cigarette to calm down. Your body craves for this on its own, and you can't supply it. Which means that you are drawing strength from inside.

Colleagues used to visit us every day, so the days passed quickly. The nights were long, very, very long. Especially Saturday and Sunday when none of our colleagues were in the plant, when we were alone, when we tried with jokes, activities... Around ten, half past ten in the evening, you retreat into your personal corner and think. Images prance in front of your eyes of your son, wife, mother, father, sister, everyone comes to mind, the things you didn't complete back home, what you are doing here and why you came... I myself thought five - six times whether I was doing the right thing - everybody told me I was crazy. First of all my wife but others as well. But I had decided. Because at home I had that one meal and I came here to do without even that one meal. My body got used to it. The biggest problems are with blood pressure, loss of bodily fluids, loss of weight. If we hadn't taken salt dissolved in water every morning, to get our strength back, I don't believe we could have endured for so long, most of us. The last day I thought that I could, at most, last another three, four days before I collapsed."

"The third day was problematic because something started eating away at my stomach and it was making me nervous," says Miodrag Bozanovic. "I didn't want food, but I wanted to clear my head of all that was hindering me from attaining my goal for which I had started the hunger strike. Juices helped, but on the seventh - eight day when the second degree of crisis appeared and when I started feeling extremely nervous, I retreated into a corner so as not to come into contact with my colleagues, not to irritate them".

Zoran Rakic agrees that hunger by itself wasn't much of a problem: "The most difficult moment for me was one late afternoon when a group of directors, some dozen of them, arrived to sort of inspect the workers and came upon a man who was at breaking point. They acted in an easy-going, insolent way and addressed that colleague. The man was in a sorry state. He fell, started talking of his children, "I hadn't seen the children in a long time" which instantly made me feel tense and I immediately started to cry."

All of the participants of the hunger strike in the Fixed Purpose Plant stress that through its duration, they felt the separation from their families most.

"I worried about the kids just like all the others, since we are all family men," says Slobodan Petkvic. "How and if they will start school, whether they have anything to eat or whether they are starving just like me. I have three children, and am the only employed member of my family. I had to do something. So that one day they could take my place - I have been working for 26 years - and have a job. I made this decision in a rational and intelligent manner. I haven't regretted it for an instant. My children told me, just like all the others: "Daddy, keep going, we're with you."

"When I decided to go on a hunger strike," continues Bozinovic, "I bid my family, my two children and my wife, farewell, just like I did in 1991 when I went off to war, just like I did in 1992 when I went off to war again to Bosnia. I was determined to persevere to the very end. At the beginning, my family didn't take this seriously, the first or second day, because they thought it was a sort of game we were playing with the executives. However, as the hunger strike continued, those who shared such thoughts, some of our colleagues and others from the city started stressing the importance of such an act in the Fixed Purpose Plant and then they started to respond and come. There were tears from members of our families, our colleagues. And when you witness all of that it hurts very, very much".

Milka Eric, president of the Quality Control Syndicate is one of the four women (a total number of six went on a hunger strike) who had starved all eleven days.

"I look upon my colleagues as upon true friends," she says "as people I love and I have to admit that they mean more to me than the others. From now on and in future.

I mostly didn't experience any crisis. True, in the morning I felt sleepy, but as the day advanced I felt better. One day I had high blood pressure, although the reason wasn't hunger, but rather when one of my friends, whom I love most of all, fell in front of the municipal building. That hurt me most of all. Everything else, apart from moments such as these of which there were many, I bore with well. That was extremely difficult for me."

"My motive as an executive," says Zoran Risti, "was that I knew of many things in the plant, I worked with those people who made the decisions, I knew which decisions were made, I knew what happened as a consequence. A decree is adopted, and the ones who have adopted it fail to observe it, simply, they observe it in connection to the workers, and it doesn't apply to them..."

"That hunger strike, and we said - all of those who had gone on a hunger strike - that we didn't offer or give our health to those of whom we are demanding what is ours," says the president of the Syndicate Nedeljkovic. "We offered it and gave it to the people who believe in us and who are with us. This hunger strike brought the people from the plant closer together: strikers were usually made up of workers, while white collar men remained aloof. This time in this hunger strike there were white collar men, employees, engineers, together with the workers. They were all together, since they had a common interest. The unity in the plant was achieved and we no longer have a division between production and administration. We are all together now and we are all going to the very end. We stopped the strike because it could have started being interpreted as a competition among the participants of who will last longer, and the health of many was seriously endangered. Our goal was to win this battle but not to lose the army."

Nedeljkovic stresses that the Syndicate of the Fixed Purpose Plant has by no means exhausted all of its means. At the moment when this text is being completed, all strikers have just been invited to gather in front of the City Assembly in Kragujevac together with their children and families. They are expecting over 30.000 people.