Part I: SERBIA’S ‘SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE’ PRIVATIZATION
The New Approach to Privatization in Serbia
“Principle 6. Privatization must be socially acceptable, i.e. the position of employees in the privatized company must not deteriorate after privatization; and ensure that a part of the capital must belong not only to the employees but also to all adult citizens of the state in order to validate the level of rights or entitlements that have been achieved in keeping with previous laws.”
– From the web site of the Privatization Agency of the Republic of Serbia, 2001
The initial privatization of ‘socially owned’ property in Serbia was launched at the end of 1989, and started in earnest a year later. The privatization law was conceived by Ante Marković, the last Prime Minister of socialist Yugoslavia. Under this law, privatization was not mandatory for all socially-owned enterprises. The ultimate decision whether or not the company was going to be privatized remained with the company’s Assembly (the highest decision making body in a socially owned enterprise). If the workers decided to do so, the company’s capital was then transformed into private shares and each worker was given the opportunity to buy them again at a reasonable price.
This may sound absurd now, but Marković’s privatization had the potential of actually preserving whatever was left from, and even to improve upon the model of Yugoslav worker’s self-management.
Even the staunchest ‘Yugo-nostalgic’ would be hard-pressed to deny the common critique that Tito’s ’self-managed’ economy was de facto managed by the one-party state. Even though lots of collectives managed to achieve substantial degrees of independence and actual self-management, at a more general level the concept of ‘social ownership’ failed to ground itself in a key element necessary for the creation of a sustainable economy – RESPONSIBILITY! Simply put, during the 1980s the whole system (especially among socialist politicians and managers, but also – though to a much lesser extent – among the workers themselves) became largely irresponsible in handling “social property.” It was thus a really good idea to try to prevent the collapse of the economy by offering workers a private stake in what had previously been "everybody’s, but at the same time nobody’s" (Sr. ‘svaÄije ali niÄije’).
Markovic’s move at the time was known as the “cold shower”, but from today’s point of view his approach to privatization can be read as a particular response to the most pressing question concerning post-communist Yugoslavia’s democratization: how to salvage a future for workers self-management from the dead-end fate awaiting the one-party state? Indeed, increasing worker ACTIVISM during the late ‘80s, in the form of countless strikes and demonstrations all over the country, became a serious threat to the ruling party (especially in an international context were communist regimes were collapsing throughout Eastern Europe). In order to maintain their power, party bureaucrats in the republics decided to change their political tune into that of nationalism.
And anyway, do not the dreams of establishing ‘greater’ national state demand ‘great’ national capitalists, and not small worker-shareholders running the economy?
The rest as they say was history and Marković’s approach to privatization was superseded by others in all of the ex-Yugoslav republics. In Serbia, Slobodan Milošević used the economic crisis and hyperinflation of 1993 as an excuse to annul Marković’s privatization. Another law that reduced the number of shares Serbia’s workers could expect was adopted in 1995 with the support of Serbia’s then opposition (now ruling) Democratic Party. It is worth noting, that this was the only case during the 1990s in which Milošević’s Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and Zoran ÄinÄ‘ić’s Democratic Party voted the same way.
A second privatization law was adopted in Serbia in 1997. Again, this privatization wasn’t mandatory and again the decision to privatize ‘socially owned’ enterprises ultimately lay with the enterprises own Assemblies. However, this time again, only a portion of the newly released shares were offered to those working in the newly privatized enterprises. For the first time, the state also received rights to its own share of socially owned property under the 1997 law. According to this law, the Republic of Serbia could acquire 30% of the company’s shares. The remaining 70% was on offer not only to the workers of the company but also to other employed citizens who couldn’t acquire shares in their own firms because their firms couldn’t be privatized (i.e. this applied mostly to those working in the public sector – including at hospitals, schools, in the state administration, the police, the army – as well as those working for military industries and in the banking and insurance sectors, etc).
In fact, it was under Milosević’s privatization law that the populist concept of ‘socially acceptable’ privatization first emerged – i.e. the idea that all adult citizens of Serbia had rights to their share of whatever was ‘socially owned’ in the state. Of course, hiding behind the mask of social justice was a plan to execute the exact opposite of what Marković’s earlier approach to privatization had intended. That is to say, the new model of privatization sought to deprive workers of effective decision-making authority. Simply put, if 30% of the capital now belongs to the state and 35% to ‘external’ shareholders, then this means that only 35% of the votes at the Shareholders’ Assembly would actually represent the interests of the workers in the company.
Additionally, in order to prevent communication between the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ shareholders, the government ensured that the ‘external’ shareholders were from cities far removed from the enterprise in question and its workers. Needless to say, this whole process was unfolding in a context of successive wars, economic sanctions, dictatorship, etc. In such an environment there was very little education among workers about what the hell was going on, which rights were being lost and which ones were being ‘gained.’
When the new ruling coalition won the 2000 elections – ending ‘communist’ rule and establishing ‘democracy’ – felt no political obligation whatsoever to consider workers as inheritors of socially owned property and rights. A new neoliberal privatization law was instead adopted in 2001. The state thus began confiscating all socially owned property. Privatization was made mandatory and a strict timeline was set for the completion of this process – a timeline that incidentally expires this year.
The new 2001 law stipulates that 70% of the company can now be sold to private investors, and that only after selling the majority share, workers can receive the remaining 30% or 15% (depending on the case). These shares are actually free, which is actually a suitable price for something that isn’t worth anything. The sole owners of the 70% majority in the enterprise can now have absolute control over management, which gives them the power to not even disclose profits to the remaining shareholders or to consult them about the direction that the company is taking.
Of course, while the new owners are technically obliged by law to disclose and share their profits with other shareholders, the reality is that for the corrupt Serbian authorities, worker-shareholders are almost uniformly seen as embarrassing ‘leftovers of communism,’ ‘enemies of reform,’ and even as ‘Stalinists.’ On the other hand, the new 70% majority shareholder is seen as an important pillar upon which the success of Serbia’s ‘democratic’ reforms depends. That is to say, these reforms depend on former communist or nationalist apparatchiks and nouveau riche ‘tycoons’ who got rich by either plundering the social property now being privatized or who managed to accumulate wealth through the wars waged in the 1990s (wars that the workers of the newly privatized firms had to bear the costs of).
In these conditions, strong pressure has been exerted in recent years on those small-shareholders that managed to hold onto majority-ownership in some of the best Serbian companies as a result of the 1997 privatization law. These shareholders have been ‘encouraged,’ through corruption and poverty, to enter a process of ‘secondary privatization’ – i.e. to sell their shares on the stock market (because this was the only aspect of their property rights that the new neoliberal regime recognized). Few of these small-shareholders dared to use their shares to actually run their own factories in the new conditions. The few workers who have elected to do so – mainly those gathered around the Jugoremedija pharmaceutical plant in Zrenjanin – could be one of the only hopes left for greater democracy in Serbia.
And yes, the ‘social acceptance’ of privatization was finally achieved last year, when all the adult citizens of Serbia who had never exercised their ‘democratic right to free shares of former held social property,’ received their own chance to avail themselves of this ‘right’ via the privatization of public sector firms – i.e. the Serbian telecom, oil and electricity providers. In this way the vast majority of the impoverished population in Serbia became accomplices in their own long-term destruction, hoping to get a few hundred Euros from the sale of public goods.
That is what neoliberals call popular support.
Part II: The battle for Jugoremedija
Jugoremedija, the Zrenjanin-based pharmaceutical manufacturer, was privatized under the 1997 law. Workers and ‘external’ shareholders jointly held some 58% of the shares, and the other 42% went to the state.
In August 2002, the Serbian government sold its share of Jugoremedija to a notorious mafia figure from the Milošević era – one Jovica Stefanović (“Nini”). At the time he purchased the state’s 42% share, Stefanović was wanted by Interpol for cigarette smuggling. He was known to be part of the entourage of that godfather of Serbia’s cigarette business during the 1990s, Marko Milošević, the son of the more infamous Slobodan.
Aside from the 16,5 million EUR for the Jugoremedija shares, Nini was also obliged under the terms of the privatization agreement to invest in the reconstruction of the factory in order to obtain European GMP (good manufacturing practice) certification for the factory’s production lines. After finishing the investment, he would then be allowed to ‘recapitalize’ Jugoremedija in order to increase his share and become the enterprise’s majority shareholder. The Jugoremedija workers and the other small, ‘external’ shareholders weren’t informed about the second part of this contract – i.e. that the state had actually sold Stefanović not only the 42% of Jugoremedija that it held, but that it also wanted him to become majority owner without consulting the firm’s 4,500 remaining shareholders.
There’s nothing unusual in all this, however, since at this point in the process of Serbian privatization – only a year after the new law was adopted – there was no legal framework whatsoever that could provide protection for the rights of workers or small shareholders. For example, the Law on Free Access to Public Information was adopted only in November 2004, and its implementation started almost a full year after that. This means that in 2002 worker-shareholders had no legal avenues through which they could even obtain the contract regulating the sale of 42% of their own company.
Actually, it was through workers’ struggles in factories like Jugoremedija that the Serbian government was eventually forced to admit that workers and small-shareholders have some rights in the privatization process. However, back in 2002, any workers’ group that tried to dispute irregularities in the privatization process would have been crucified in the national media as ‘Stalinists,’ ‘enemies of transition,’ and so on…
After the state sold its 42% share, the Jugoremedija workers started organizing themselves and mobilizing the support of ‘external’ shareholders. During the company’s March 2003 Shareholders’ Assembly, Stefanović proposed his investment plan which sought investments in raw materials not crucial upgrades. He misled the assembled shareholders by arguing that this was part of his contract with the state. The representative of the workers and small shareholders at the assembly was Zdravko Deurić, who rejected Stefanović’s proposal. In retaliation, Stefanović suspended Deurić as well as union leader Vladimir Pecikoza.
As the situation deteriorated, Jugoremedija workers went on strike in December 2003, demanding that Stefanović stop mobbing (intimidating) union activists and those in the shareholders’ association. Stefanović agreed to their demands on January 6, but after the strike ended he hired private security guards who only subsequently intensified the intimidation tactics against workers. In the meantime, Stefanović produced a forgery of the Shareholder Assembly’s original decision on investment and presented himself at Zrenjanin’s Economic Court as Jugoremedija’s ‘64%’ majority-owner.
After accidentally learning about this (Deurić was in Court attending to some other business when he saw that the ownership structure was being changed), the workers reacted with another strike in early March 2004. After they learnt of the actual content of the contract between the state and Stefanović – i.e. stipulating the need to invest in upgrades for GMP certification – the workers turned their strike into a protest. They now demanded that the state terminate its contract with Stefanović, because he didn’t fulfill his obligations under its terms.
On March 15, Serbia’s Ministry of Economy concluded that Stefanović hadn’t fulfilled his investment obligations. A group of about 100 Jugoremedija workers converged on Belgrade and blocked the Privatization Agency’s premises for a day, demanding that the state file legal proceedings to terminate its contract with Stefanović. The PA did so the next day. On 3 April 2004 Stefanović’s management left the factory.
Following negotiations organized at the beginning of August 2004 by then Minister of Economy Predrag Bubalo, the workers agreed to let Stefanović’s management return to the factory and to work with them until the courts could determine which side was the majority owner. Stefanović’s CEO Aleksandar Radovanović also agreed that the private security force that caused the March incidents wouldn’t be hired again and that Jugoremedija workers will provide their own security. However, on August 16, about 120 members of Stefanović’s private security force came into the factory and started a fight with the workers. The police arrived to separate the two-sides but ignored worker-shareholder demands that the private security force must leave since they hadn’t been authorized by the management to be on the premises of the Jugoremedija factory.
After a few days, on August 19, Stefanović’s private army provoked another fight and the Zrenjanin police used it as an excuse to conclude that they no longer have control over the situation. Serbia’s then Minister of Interior, Dragan JoÄić, sent special police units from Belgrade (the so called „Gendarmerie“), commanded by the police general Milivoje Markov, to stabilize the situation.
Markov immediately called Deurić and three more strike leaders for talks at the police station. Upon their arrival at the station they were told that they were being arrested. After separating the strikers from their leadership in this way, Markov ordered that his unit kick the remaining workers out of Jugoremedija. Deurić and the other three strike-leaders spent the next 10 days in solitary confinement, while the police initiated criminal proceedings against them for ‘causing a public danger.’ The very next day Stefanović began firing workers. In next few months 150 of them got fired for different reasons.
Over the next two and a half years, this group of 150 worker-shareholders, now without jobs, struggled – with the support of Jugoremedija’s other small-shareholders, local unions and left activist groups and intellectuals from Serbia and abroad – through direct action and within the courts to prove that Stefanović had broken his contract with the state. In the summer of 2006, Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein were among the many intellectuals and activists from around the world who addressed Serbian President Boris Tadić and Prime-Minister Vojislav Koštunica with letters of support for the Jugoremedija workers.
We won in the end, and on 1 March 2007 Jugoremedija became the only factory in Serbia operated by worker-shareholders! After the court canceled the state’s contract with Stefanović, all small-shareholders (both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ shareholders), voted for the workers to establish their own management in the factory. Zdravko Deurić is now serving as the CEO of Jugoremedija.
Realizing that he was going to loose this battle, Stefanović tried to halt production in November 2006, hoping to bankrupt Jugoremedija in order to take it over later as a majority creditor. After March 2007, the state attempted several times to declare Jugoremedija bankrupt because of the tax-related debt incurred under Stefanović’s management. However, the workers quickly succeeded in reorganizing the company’s production lines and to pay the whole debt owed to the state within only a few months.
Another big challenge was the reconciliation process between the workers who were fired, and those who stayed to work for Stefanović – especially with those who supported him in public during the struggle. Even though there were several incidents between these groups in March and April 2007, both the workers’ new management and the union took a stand that no act of revenge on strikebreakers would be tolerated. They also decided that former strikebreakers could no longer count on the privileges they were granted under Stefanović at the expense of their striking co-workers.
During the Shareholders’ Assembly in September 2007, the workers’ management proposed their own investment plan to Jugoremedija’s shareholders – this time, the hope was not to seek a ‘solution’ to the problem of GMP certification by looking for an outside investor, but to do so through Jugoremedija’s own revenues. The EUR 15 million investment plan was supported by the Assembly. The state, now again in possession of 42% of the shares, abstained from voting. After the Shareholders’ Assembly vote, Serbia’s Ministry of the Economy decided not to try selling its share of Jugoremedija before the reconstruction of the factory was completed.
According to workers’ plans, the reconstruction is to be completed by August 2009.
Reflecting on the outcome of their victory, it is important to note that this particular model of workers’ control unfortunately can’t technically be applied to most workplaces under Serbia’s current legal order regulating privatization. Nonetheless, Jugoremedija has become a symbol for workers struggles throughout Serbia, because it has shown that solidarity, as well as persistent and clever ACTIVISM can triumph over powerful enemies like Jovica Stefanović and the state administration.
The current struggle by Jugoremedija workers to reconstruct and develop their factory shows how RESPONSIBILITY for property can provide peace and understanding between people with such opposing standpoints as workers and shareholders, or even strikers and strikebreakers.
It sounds like an opportunity for a country that has only recently emerged from the bloodiest war in Europe after WW2.
Inspired and helped by the workers of Jugoremedija, other workers in Zrenjanin have since radicalized their own struggles as well. The most distinguished example being the struggle waged by the workers of the Šinvoz train factory. However, the Šinvoz case also shows that the Government and the bosses in Serbia have learnt valuable lessons from the Jugoremedija experience. In 2007, a new strategy targeting workers’ unions and small-shareholders was launched – a strategy aimed at deliberately putting the company into bankruptcy.
Part III: ŠINVOZ – THE CASE OF BANKRUPTCY
Šinvoz started privatization in the early ‘90s, under Ante Marković’s original privatization law. Workers bought 14% of the initial offering of shares, but after a couple of months the management suggested that the privatization process be temporarily suspended in light of the 1993 hyperinflation triggered by UN economic sanctions imposed on the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY).
Šinvoz’s Assembly reached a decision at the time to halt the privatization process, which proved to be quite a smart move, because if they continued, workers’ shares would have been terminated in 1995. But, since the sale of shares was halted in early 1993, workers who bought shares managed to keep their 14%. It wouldn’t help them much in the years to come however. Under the terms of the 2001 privatization deal, the workers got an additional 30% of the Šinvoz’s shares – thus bringing their ownership of the enterprise to 44% of the total.
On 26 April 2004, Serbia’s Privatization Agency (PA) sold 56% of Šinvoz’s remaining capital to one Nebojša Ivković from Belgrade. At that point in time there were 694 employees in the company. Besides paying the sale price, Ivković took on the added obligation of investing 17.9-million dinars into company assets in the 12-month period following the signing of the contract. Despite numerous warnings by worker-shareholders that Ivković was sabotaging the company – they presented five broken diesel-electric engines for the purposes of cutting into waste-iron as a senseless ‘investment’ by the new owner – the PA, nonetheless accepted an audit report that concluded that investments were being carried out in conformity with the contract.
During the inspections by state auditors of Ivković’s execution of his contractual obligations – conducted on 24 October 2005, 17 April 2006 and 20 March 2007 – the PA’s officials refused repeated requests by worker-shareholders to simply observe the recently purchased and useless engines lying in the Šinvoz yard. The workers also informed the PA about the possibility that the engines weren’t bought by Nebojša Ivković, but that they had come from an arrangement between Šinvoz and the Serbian Railroad Company before Ivković purchased his 56% share of Šinvoz. The PA did nothing to follow up on any of these allegations (even though in April 2008 these allegations were proven by the Anti-Corruption Council of the Government of Serbia).
By early 2007, Ivković had halted production in Šinvoz, blaming the workers’ protests for “sabotaging” the company’s development. Although the workers warned the PA that the majority owner was deliberately driving the company into bankruptcy, the PA concluded that Ivković‘s management was performing well. In the summer of 2007, the workers launched public protests in front of Zrenjanin’s City Hall. There was no response from local authorities. Instead, Šinvoz union leader Mita Lisica and one more worker were fired from their jobs. Local courts reinstated them in September, only a few days before Šinvoz’s two major creditors – Belgrade-based TTC Logistic and Jugopapir – filed legal demands for debtor bankruptcy.
Interestingly, both these creditor companies are also owned by Nebojša Ivković.
It may seem weird that an owner would force his company into bankruptcy. However, there is a certain logic to such a strategy, for while the majority shareholder (Ivković) can control the company, he cannot control it absolutely as long as the workers are also co-owners. This is doubly true after worker-shareholder struggles like those at Jugoremedija increased the level of respect for property rights in Serbia.
Therefore, since 2007 bosses acquiring newly privatized firms throughout Serbia, started to employ the following simple tactic: they would appoint a management team with no worker-shareholder representatives and use the absence of control to make bad business deals through which the company would become indebted. Yet the trick is that the debts are incurred to shell companies owned by the same person. So, when the factories go bankrupt, the former majority owner, now the majority creditor, re-buys them – this time with 100% of the shares.
Besides the workers’ shares, the second target of this type of scam is the collective bargaining agreement between the union and the management – an agreement that the new owners (often) inherit from the socialist era. The agreement is annulled as well when the company goes into bankruptcy, all the workers are laid off and the union ceases to exist. When a former majority owner regains the factory after bankruptcy, he/she can then choose whom to re-employ. Any union that is reinstated under such conditions will be under the full control of the boss and his/her new management.
On 28 December 2007, Šinvoz’s worker-shareholders occupied their factory, demanding from the government a termination of the contract and an investigation into Šinvoz’s debts (incurred as we have already seen to TTC Logistic, Jugopapir and a few other firms owned by Ivković). A few days prior to the occupation, Jugoremedija, Šinvoz, BEK and workers at a number of other Zrenjanin factories, formed the local political movement ‘Pokret RAVNOPRAVNOST’ (i.e. the EQUALITY Movement).
On 15 January 2008, around 1,000 worker-shareholders from Šinvoz and BEK led a protest down to Belgrade’s Union Hall, demanding the termination of the Šinvoz privatization deal and an agreement with the government about how both companies can get out of bankruptcy. During the night, between January 15th and 16th, 40 year-old Šinvoz worker Radislav Stojanov died of a heart attack during a sit-in protest.
After the Belgrade media reported that a worker had died during the protest, Serbia’s Minister of Economy MlaÄ‘an Dinkić called a special meeting with the workers’ representatives. At the press conference that followed the meeting, the Minister publically stated that: “It is obvious that the majority owner deliberately placed Šinvoz into bankruptcy.” Dinkić also announced that his Ministry would investigate how the PA had regulated Ivković’s fulfillment of the privatization contract, and that he was going to initiate a police investigation into the way Šinvoz went bankrupt. “It doesn’t take long to establish all those facts,” the Minister said, “and we will try to act as fast as possible, because Serbia needs such production and those products can be exported too!”
On 31 January 2008, the PA terminated its contract with Ivković on the basis of the same arguments they had been ignoring since 2005 – i.e. that Ivković worked to forge and sabotage the investment.
Since March 2008, the EQUALITY Movement and the Zrenjanin branch of the Autonomous Unions of Serbia have been organizing a Solidarity Fund for the Šinvoz workers, to help them to survive during this struggle. The Šinvoz workers haven’t received any payment since Ivković halted production in February 2007.
During the remainder of 2008, the PA has failed to launch any proceedings against Ivković for fraud and deliberate bankruptcy. The PA thus refuses to exercise its jurisdiction over such matters or, in according with Article 41d from the Law on Privatization, to appoint a representative of public capital for Šinvoz following the termination of the contract with Ivković.
This last provision is imperative, as the PA is obliged to appoint the representative of public capital the very same day of the contract’s termination, no matter what the status of the company (bankrupt, or not). If the representative had been appointed as the owner of 30% of Šinvoz’s capital, he/she would have been able, according to Article 129 of the Law on Bankruptcy Proceedings, to submit the reorganization plan. This was the least that the state could do for a company that went into bankruptcy because of the irresponsible and illegal acts of the PA in the first place. Yet, the PA did nothing to press the fraud charges against Ivković, so on 14 July 2008 he submitted his own reorganization plan for Šinvoz.
Ivković’s plan for the reorganization of the company that he in fact destroyed would provide only 50 jobs by 2010, and a 100 more by 2012!
The assembly of creditors, that was convened to make the decision on Ivković’s reorganization plan, was scheduled for 24 September 2008 at the Zrenjanin Economic Court. As legal majority creditor Ivković was in a position to adopt his reorganization plan by himself. About 100 workers came to the Economic Court as small creditors, and started applauding and chanting when the judge entered the courtroom. The assembly couldn’t be held because of the noise, so the session was postponed for October 1. The workers submitted an initiative before the court to delay the hearing on the reorganization plan and suspend the bankruptcy proceedings until the parallel criminal proceedings concerning Ivković’s deliberate forcing of a bankruptcy on Šinvoz were completed.
On September 31, the governments’ Anti-Corruption Council released its report on Šinvoz, stating that it was a drastic example of law breaking in the privatization process. The report further blamed the states’ Privatization Agency for possible corruption given its drastically poor regulation of Ivković’s fulfillment of contractual obligations. The Council advised the Government to plead with the Economic Court to halt the bankruptcy proceedings until the Prosecutors’ Office completes its investigation of Ivković’s management for deliberate bankruptcy.
On October 1, the judge refused to answer the workers requests, so they started again by applauding and chanting: “The Factory is ours!”; “Arrest the thieves!”; “The Court is for the People!” and so-on. After about half-an-hour, the police kicked the workers out of the courtroom, and the restructuring plan was adopted without the workers being present. The workers then appealed to the Higher Economic Court in Belgrade.
In the meantime, on 11 May 2008, local elections were held across Serbia. The EQUALITY Movement took 4 seats in Zrenjanin’s local council. On November 24, EQUALITY’s councilors initiated a City of Zrenjanin Inquiry Board on Šinvoz, which would investigate the circumstances surrounding Šinvoz’s bankruptcy. All the local political parties voted for proposal, which is quite a unique case in Serbia, deeply divided among nationalistic and pro-European parties, which often can’t find common ground on any issue. More importantly, this was the first commission ever established in Serbia by elected representatives, at either the local or the national level, to investigate a privatization case.
On 2 February 2009, the Higher Economic Court in Belgrade upheld the verdict reached by the Zrenjanin Economic Court on 1 October 2008 allowing Nebojša Ivković to implement his Reorganization Program for Šinvoz. This means that the man who intentionally put Šinvoz into bankruptcy, deceived the other shareholders (the workers and pensioners of Šinvoz), and broke his contract with state, is now being given total control over the factory. It’s not enough that he managed to avoid jail, but he is now actually being rewarded by the courts for perpetuating this scam.
At a meeting held a few days later on 6 February 2009, over 300 Šinvoz workers voted to continue the struggle. At the same meeting, intellectuals and activists who are standing in solidarity with the Šinvoz workers formed a Citizens’ Board in Support of Šinvoz Workers. Among those on the Citizens’ Board are known intellectuals from Serbia’s summer of ’68, including Dr. Zagorka Golubović and Dr. Nebojša Popov, as well as Freedom Fight activist Ivan Zlatić and others.
On 21 February 2009, attendees at the Congress on Economic Solidarity in Vienna (Austria) signed a letter of support for these Šinvoz workers. Five days later, EQUALITY Movement councilor and the Chairman of the Board, Branislav Markuš, read the letter in front of Zrenjanin’s City Parliament, to encourage the other MPs to support the conclusions of the Inquiry Board.
http://www.solidarische-oekonomie.at/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=84
Famous Serbian leftist filmmaker Želimir Žilnik, together with his young colleague Dragan Gmizić, made a documentary „The Case of Bankruptcy“, about the struggle of the Šinvoz workers. The film premiered on February 24 in Zrenjanin.
On February 26, Zrenjanin’s city council adopted the conclusions and recommendations of the Board of Inquiry with respect to Šinvoz. The Board concluded that the fraud committed was obvious, and that the Court should use its right under Article 102 and 103 of the Law on Bankruptcy to nullify all the company’s contracts made in the 5 years prior to the bankruptcy.
ALL MEMBERS OF ZRENJANIN CITY COUNCIL VOTED FOR THE REPORT OF THE BOARD. AT THE SAME SESSION, THE COUNCIL ELECTED A NEW WORKING GROUP THAT WILL WORK ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE INQUIRY BOARDS’ RECOMENDATIONS!
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In order to support the Šinvoz workers’ struggle, please sign the attached letter and send it to the following 5 addresses:
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
* Boris Tadić, President of the Republic of Serbia, kontakt.
* Mirko Cvetković, Prime minister of the Government of Serbia,
* Ivica DaÄić, Minister of Interior
Dear Sir / Madam:
I am writing to you in regards to information I received regarding the privatization and bankruptcy of Zrenjanin’s factory Šinvoz, and the destiny of over 600 worker-shareholders who were employed in the company before the bankruptcy.
Since December 2007 Šinvoz workers have been protesting because they lost their property and their jobs after: (1) the majority owner Nebojša Ivković deliberately placed the company in a state of bankruptcy, but also (2) because the Privatization Agency behaved in a drastically irresponsible and illegal way. These facts have been established by the Anti-Corruption Council of the Government of Serbia, and by the Inquiry Board into Šinvoz established by Zrenjanin’s City Council. Still, the Prosecutors’ Office and the Economic Court are ignoring these findings, while the Privatization Agency and the Ministry of Economy are denying the facts by taking no actions whatsoever to repair the consequences of their misconduct.
I am asking you and your institution to do everything in your power to protect the worker-shareholders of Šinvoz’s rights to work and to private property, to prevent the robbery of this factory and the destitution of over 600 families in a city already devastated by the economic transition.
Seeing that your government strives to establish democracy in Serbia I am sure that you realize that the protection of the fundamental rights of worker-shareholders is central to the success of democratic reforms. A country that only respects the interests of the rich and not the rights of other citizens cannot become a free country but only a land of slaves.
Yours truly,
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