Layed Off

Ph.D. Marija Kolin, Director of the Institute of Social Science, describes the recent phenomenon of laying off in the following terms: "a laid off worker is an integral part of reforms.  Inefficient and surplus labor has to be laid off in order for enterprises to have economic purpose, and not merely social purpose, as was the case thus far.  Logic and ideology are changing, and therefore the attitude of citizens to this problem must change as well.  Up to now the state took care of everything - but now we must begin to take care of ourselves." This is how it looks in practice: the Serbian Government adopted a Program of Reorganization and Strategic Consolidation of the Zastava Group, those in charge printed up lists of the inefficient and surplus workers, and social institutions took over their cases.

However, in the field, things are stripped of complicated percentages and complicated names, and are reduced to what are usually called "human dramas."  In August of this year, thousands of workers were forced to accept the fact that they no longer have what was taken for granted in the past fifty years: the status of permanently employed workers with social and medical insurance and the occasional salary which is welcome whenever it is paid out.

A LIST INSTEAD OF A PENSION:  Chemical technician Dragan Milentijevic worked at the Zastava Factory for 39 years, technician Gordana Guzevic worked for 33 years, while human resources worker Radmila Covic worked at the Factory for 34 years.  All three of them, along with many others who only have several years left before going into retirement, decided to choose option no. 2.  Younger workers who worked at the factory for far fewer years and who would get a far smaller settlement did not choose this option, so that the unemployment office in Kragujevac is filled these days with people who would be calmly waiting for retirement under normal circumstances.

"No one can understand this because they are finishing their working career completely abnormally.  My kids are all grown up, I don't have any worries and I could give my best to the factory up to now.  I knew my name was on the list of those who are getting laid off, because I am due to retire soon, so that I was ready for August 8 when the lists were made public.  The atmosphere was very strange.  People were running through the factory as if they were running for their lives, while I myself did not even go to check whether I still had a job or not.  I cleared up my desk ahead of time, last week I handed back my factory pass and said good by to my colleagues.  I feel cast out.  Everyone knows how you are supposed to reach retirement, and I never got that," Ramila Covic told VREME.

The fact that they are not getting retired the way they imagined, with the customary golden handshake, is something that effects most of the soon-to-be-retired workers we spoke to.  Dragan Milentijevic even began organizing a retirement party for his friends and colleagues.  He accepted his laying off fairly calmly, however: "I only had one year left until retirement, so that now I'll be doing what I planned on doing anyway.  Still, I'm having trouble sleeping, I'm snappy, I'm dealing with all problems more emotionally than I did before.  I'm miffed at the fact that everything was done upside down.  While signing documents, it turned out that I had to accept everything that they offered to me, while no one explained to us what the settlement will be, nor when we will get it, nor whether the new Law on Employment will effect us.  Still, I don't feel duped.  I only feel bad."

Gordana Guzevic registered at the Kragujevac Unemployment Office two months after having been laid off, because she could not accept the fact that she had lost her job.  She told us that she took it very badly, that she kept asking herself why they did not let her work two more years, which is how much she had before retirement, that she has very few friends and that her laying off will make her even more isolated.  "It was the end of the world for me.  I never had to do anything so hard as cleaning up my desk, while I put off giving back my factory pass until they called me up to return it.  And the documents I signed stated that I was doing all this of my own free will!  I had a very difficult time signing... I went, changed my mind, went back, and many times like that.  In the end I signed, because it was clear that I had to do that."

WHAT NOW?:  After workers of the Zastava Factory chose one of the three offered options, it was expected that Kragujevac will be flooded with private companies and the black market, that is to say that all those who lost their jobs will invest their settlement money in the activities they made money from in the past.  However, this did not happen.  Those who chose option no. 2 got the biggest settlements, but are too old to be "starting off from scratch".  On the other hand, the remaining two options which are more attractive to younger people, include settlements that are too small to start anything.  Because of all this, Kragujevac is looking no different than before: those who worked on the black market are still doing the same, waiting for a better job, while all those who worked "on the side" for private companies are still holding onto these jobs.  Settlements are mostly being used for current expenses, renovating houses, apartments, or buying property.

After waiting for ten years for an apartment, Gordana finally got it in 1997, but salaries in the Zastava Factory were not sufficient to buy even the most basic house necessities: "I and my daughter are full of bliss the past four days because we just purchased a sink, whereas we used to wash our dishes in the bathtub up to now.  I also bought a used desk, because my daughter used to study on the same table on which I used to make the pastries I sell at the market.  We don't even have a washer, but I can't spend any more of the settlement money.  I grow flowers.  My office at the factory is full of light, so that I had over 200 flower pots in it.  I want to invest the money in a glass house so that I can save all those flowers in time for Women's Day (March 8), when I could make some money.  Since they drove us out in this way, I have to do something else."

By contrast with her, Dragan has been working as a vegetable farmer during the past five years, but only for his own requirements.  As a town boy he did not know much about agriculture, but he learned quickly.  When he is not working in his garden, he goes to the local pub, he is very outgoing, jovial, used to act in the theater so that everyone likes him.  His settlement was 160,000 dinars ( a little over 5000 DEM), but did not buy himself even Kleenex: "In the past ten years, all my appliances have slowly gone to ruin, my home needs renovation.  Most of the money went into renovation.  I left a little on the side, it'll come in handy."  Employees at the Kragujevac Unemployment Office state that the way workers spend their settlements does not pose a problem and that, contrary to expectations, the money is being spent very rationally.  Used to a hard life, everyone made lists of priorities to which they are sticking.  Taxi drivers, who are proverbially well informed, confirm this information: "When they got their money, everyone was more relaxed, but spending patterns did not change much.  We only drove people who were visiting Kragujevac."  Butchers shops and garment boutiques report the same situation - their sales have not gone up.  "No one has money.  Everyone is eating bread and potatoes and wearing rags," we were told in shopping centers, stores and at the market.  And while it was clear to everyone that settlements cannot change life greatly, the main problem was how to spend the day, what to do with one self in the absence of usual obligations at work.  Since disciplined lists of rational priorities have little effect for these people, the situation mostly depends on personal character.  In the cues at the Unemployment Office we could mostly hear "a little for the pub, a little for friends, a little for the garden."  Since work at the factory was in shifts, laid off workers say "we used to work shifts so that you never knew when you will sleep, so that it's fitting that we get a little rest"...  More intimate contact indicates that systems of self-consolation do not help much.  "At the beginning I was depressed.  When I realized that I do not have a job, I looked at the three kiwis growing in front of my house and thought to myself: God, will I die looking at these same three trees..." Radmila tells us.

CAN'T BLAME ENYONE BUT OURSELVES:  When we asked the laid off workers who they blame for the situation they find themselves in, we did not get a direct answer at the beginning.  But sooner or later, the blame came to the Government, "all those ministers", and those Americans.  According to Dragan Milentijevic, the latter are the main culprits: "The section of the factory I worked at was very profitable until the nineties.  Then the Americans isolated us, reduced our market, froze our bank accounts.  Now when this happened to them, honestly, to tell you, I was kinda glad.  They did not loose much sleep over our troubles."

As far as the ministers in the Government are concerned, explanations are simpler.  All explanations boil down to the argument that the Government is to blame because it wanted to close down Zastava.  "Revolts and strikes here were always political in nature.  When our salaries were late, we demonstrated for two days, and then we realized that we were missing the point and that someone was merely playing with us.  It's the same now, politics are mixed in.  The entire process of transition has been carried out chaotically and without a plan.  Even ten years ago I used to tell demonstrators that they should not be doing that.  The old government was not so bad, and the present government is not so good.  They are all Serbs, and we Serbs are very specific.  It must be that way," Dragan explains to us.

Two months after the first phase of the government's Program of Reorganization and Strategic Consolidation, the people who are on the other side, whose names appear on the laid off lists, are having the hardest time.  The laid off workers we interviewed told us that their colleagues with jobs mostly envy them, that they fear new laying off, that they are talking about empty factory facilities and are also blaming "those in power."  There is very little remaining of the complicated unionizing for which Kragujevac is famous.  There is also very little of the old refrain "God help us poor people."  It seems that everyone is silently accepting the fact that laying off is part of the process of reform and that everyone must fend for themselves.  If nothing else, this is a clear indicator that the time is drawing near when everyone must accept the fact that enterprises must be guided by economic rational and not political.  The fact that some people will be able to continue a normal life in this process, while others will be sentenced to watching three kiwis in their yards on a daily basis, that some will calmly see retirement while others will be denied their long expected retirement party... is off little importance for the long heralded reforms.  In any case, this is merely a human story.