Thousands battle police in Belgrade
Union workers demand gov't resign
By John Catalinotto
Ten thousand workers struck the Sartid steel
complex in Smederevo, Serbia, on Oct. 14. Two weeks later, on
Oct. 29, the largest workers' demonstration since the overthrow
of the government of Slobodan Milosevic in October 2000 marched
on the Serb parliament in Belgrade. Thou sands of demonstrators
demanded an end to privatization of state-owned companies and
the resignation of the government.
These two events, seemingly so far removed from here, impact
directly on the lives of workers in the United States.
To understand this, it helps to know that the U.S. Steel
Corporation had bought Sartid a month before the strike. Access
to this technologically advanced plant and its 10,000 skilled
workers cost the giant U.S. corporation a mere $23 million,
although Yugoslavia had invested $1 billion in it from 1990 to
2000. The steel complex produces specialized steel that has
buyers on the world market.
But the best part of it all--as the owners of U.S. Steel see
it--is that these workers with more than 30 years experience
receive the equivalent of $159 per month. According to an
article by Spomenka Deretic in the Oct. 17 issue of the Serb
journal Artel, their pay is 33 Serbian dinars per hour, or
about 65 cents. The union is asking for 55 dinars, or about
$1.10.
Deretic's article compares the low wages of the workers at
Sartid with the higher wages paid at a U.S. Steel plant in
nearby Slovakia--where workers get $3.74 an hour--and with
workers at U.S. Steel here, who are paid $15 to $25 per
hour.
The strike--at least the first phase of it--lasted until
Oct. 23, when negotiations started. What worker in the U.S.
would not see this strike as completely justified?
Workers here might also be outraged that U.S. Steel could go
into the Balkans or into Central Europe to find skilled,
talented workers and force them to accept one-25th of what
steel workers get here.
But it is harder to see the connection between those low
wages and the so-called humanitarian war the U.S. and its NATO
allies waged against Yugoslavia over four years ago. Or how
that war allowed the privatization and sell-off of major
Yugoslav industries.
Clinton's lie that this was a "humanitarian" war was as big
as the Bush administration's tale that the invasion of Iraq has
nothing to do with oil.
Before the 78-day bombing of Yugo slavia and the overthrow
of the government led by the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS)
the following year, the steel plant was off-limits to U.S.
capital. Replacing that government with parties and individuals
tied to Western governments and banking interests has opened up
Yugoslav industry to the world, that is, to the imperialist
world, to the same monopolies that control economic life in the
West.
Before this happened, the Yugoslav state protected its
workers against foreign capital. It also, in effect, protected
U.S. workers from competition. At least no big U.S. corporation
could just take over and make decisions to fire workers in
Serbia, then a part of Yugoslavia. The same was true in
Slovakia, which before the 1990s was part of socialist
Czechoslovakia.
The U.S. Steel purchase of Sartid is only one of 882 major
purchases at low prices of Yugoslav industries by U.S. and West
European capital. They paid $1.4 billion in total to the
regime, of which about 50 percent is from U.S. corporations.
Less than 25 percent of these funds went to social benefits for
the 110,000 workers, who in the former Yugoslavia were
considered owners of the industries.
In most cases, the company taking over an industry savagely
cut the work force. In some, they just stopped production
entire ly, to destroy competition with their other factories
around the world. But Sartid's highly developed electronically
run machines, especially its technology for finishing the
steel, and its work force, made it a going concern.
Workers march on parliament
What also made Sartid remarkable is that the workers fought
back. And they did so as workers in all of Serbia were
preparing to battle the pro-NATO government.
On Oct. 29-31 thousands of workers protested before the
parliament in Bel grade, called out by the Alliance of Inde
pendent Serbian Unions. Meanwhile Par li ament was debating a
no-confidence vote in the government. Many of the workers,
including the miners, were from unions that in October 2000 had
supported the parties now in office.
Police stopped buses filled with workers from arriving at
the capital. On Oct. 30, they used teargas to break up the
protest.
After three years of a post-Milosevic, pro-capitalist,
pro-NATO government that is even promising to send troops to
Iraq and is helping turn the former Yugo slavia into a colony
of the West, the organized workers in Yugoslavia are showing
resistance.
Meanwhile, Milosevic has been battling charges at The Hague,
Netherlands, for alleged war crimes. He has represented himself
before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia (ICTY), which was organized by the same NATO
countries that launched a brutal 78-day bombing campaign of
that country. Many accounts assert that Milosevic's determined
political defense and sharp cross-examinations have stymied the
ICTY prosecutors. NATO's court has failed to prove its
case.
In synch with the growing resistance inside Serbia, groups
of emigrants from Yugoslavia plus European organizations that
defend Milosevic will march on The Hague Nov. 8, demanding that
the former Yugoslav president be released from prison and given
two years to prepare his defense case.
They say that by standing steadfastly against the ICTY,
countering all the lies told about Serb people, and
straightening out the facts about NATO's aggression against
Yugoslavia, Milosevic has been doing a service, not only to
Serbia and Yugoslavia, but to the workers of the world and
anyone fighting U.S. imperialism.
Reprinted from the Nov. 13, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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