Industrial unrest has not been confined to Macedonia, however, On November 20 miners in the Bosnian commune of Tuzla went on strike. Two pits, employing 3,200 workers, were involved. The miners demanded a 100% wage rise, five tons of free coal per year and equal wages for disabled miners. Their October wages had ranged from 150,000 to 180,000 dinars. Five days later the strike was still on - the management having offered only a 30% wage rise. The Tuzla miners left their mines, stopped buses bringing in new shifts and also potential strikebreakers, and asked the men to
Here are the comments of some of the local functionaries. The party secretary: "This is not a normal strike — it is an antisocial action. Workers from other pits are being encouraged to join in." A technical
"This should not be allowed to carry on. " President of the Tuzla commune assembly: "This is not a social but an enemy action. It has nothing to do with self-management." Members of the management complained that they did not feel safe among the strikers. According to Politika on November 25, the management is threatening to close down the two pits if the strike Authorities intimidate the workers
There are currently many examples of the authorities' intimidation of workers. On November 20, the Bosnian republican government declared that the enterprise Agrokomerc, whose management was involved in the recent notorious financial scandal [see IV 131], would be closed down, laying off its 12,000 workers. The republican minister for agriculture is on record as saying that the workers were also to blame for the scandal, and hence must pay with the loss of their jobs. The Agrokomerc workers have not recovered from the shock caused by the sudden demise of what had appeared to be one of the most successful of Yugoslav enterprises — not sufficiently, at any rate, to organize mass protest meetings or demonstrations. Part of their problem has been the sudden arrival of real hardship, including hunger, not to speak of the collapse of the regional economy.
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The case of the Labin miners in Croatia is particularly instructive for understanding the extent of vindictiveness demonstrated by management towards striking workers. Last spring these miners maintained the longest strike in post-war Yugoslav history [see IV 123]. Faceworkers from the pit Ripnda, whose action sparked off the strike, warned at the time of misinvestment in that pit. One result however of their action has been that the pit has now closed down as unprofitable. This means that 320 miners are currently without a job, awaiting transfer to other pits in the Labin mine. But the management controls the transfers, and it is using this control as an instrument of revenge against strike leaders.
Movement will grow in scope and militancy
Take the case of Ahmed Kavgic, a 38year-old miner, who has spent half his life working in the pits of the Istrian coal mine. Once the strike was over, he was immediately suspended from his previous job as a work team leader. During the strike Kavgic workers are learning new lessons in this now open class war against its bureaucracy, so too is the bureaucracy.
In fact, the workers are faced with a war of attrition, in which today's victories can only too easily become tomorrow's defeats. Hence, the workers will have to learn new techniques and forms of self organization: their weakness today resides in their inability to create more permanent structures, capable of policing agreements or consolidating gains of common action.
Yugoslavia's decentralized economy and body politic is an effective obstacle to the kind of vertical/horizontal integration within the industrial branches on the Polish model. Instead, forms of organization and types of action more appropriate to the Yugoslav system will have to be found. Most likely, workers will have to create workers' councils and local state assemblies of their own — gaining control simultaneously of the enterprises and the local state administration, by extending their activities from the factories into the neighbourhoods.
A major problem lies in the intelligentsia,
YUGOSLAVIA which shows little if any interest in the often desperate workers' struggles, committed as it is in its vast majority to further market liberalization. This means that, for the time being, workers will have to go it alone — until they can capture, say, at least one large industrial town and run it themselves, lock, stock and barrel. Only then might the myopic mood of the intelligentsia
Workers today enjoy the advantage of a relatively open press which, by writing about their strikes often with a good deal of sympathy, prevents them from being nipped in the bud by local organs of repression. The workers, therefore, have a real interest in the current struggle waged within the party between liberals and hard-liners, since the party of course ultimately controls the media. The Yugoslav system still remains formally committed to party-worker alliance, and its media will continue to highlight the increasing number of points where this alliance is no longer working — provided that the hardliners do not step in to stop it. *
Notebooks for Study and Research had been elected to head a commission, established by the miners themselves, over and above their treacherous workers' coun cil, to put their point of view and negotiate a settlement. The commission was important in shifting the balance of power within the enterprise in favour of the pit workers. After the strike, however, through a few "technical organization changes", the management restored its control and is now using its power of redistribution of jobs to remove the workers' natural leaders. Kavgic is set to lose his job altogether.
A manager told a NIN correspondent:
POPULISM IN LATIN AMERICA
"Why should we employ this troublemaker rather than somebody who will be prepared
A collection of essays by Adolfo Gilly, Helena to go underground whenever instructed?"
As a result Kavgic has not even felt able to
Hirata, Carlos M. Vilas and the Argentine PRT, complain, either to the workers' council or selected and presented by Michael Löwy to the court of associated labour, for illegal dismissal from his previous post. The La-
In Brazil, Brizola's populist PDT is vying with the PT for the workers' allebin miners, exhausted after a two-month giance, in Mexico the PRI stil coopts most forms öf discontent, in Arstrike and now also fearing unemployment, gentina Peronism is staging a comeback. Many Latin American parties are unlikely to be able to mount another are allying with the Socialits International. This notebook examines the strike in the near future, even to protect origins, mechanisms and limitations of populism in Mexico, Argentina workers under threat.
and Brazil. 40 pages. £2, $3.50. 20FF.
Unemployment - that is, the policy of
Also available:
closing down "unprofitable" enterprises —
N°T - The Place of Marxism in History, Ernest Mandel. 20FF, £2, $3.50 has been a powerful stick with which to
N°2 - The Chinese Revolution - Part I: The Second Chinese Revolution beat workers in general, and militant workand the Shaping of the Maoist Outlook, Pierre Rousset. 20FF, £2, $3.50.
ers in particular. For example, Jadraska
N°3 — The Chinese Revolution - Part Il: The Maoist Project Tested in
Zeljezara, a steel works near the port of the Struggle for Power, Pierre Rousset. 25FF, $2.50, $4.00
Split, was recently closed down only in or-
Nº4 - Revolutionary Strategy Today, Daniel Bensaid. 20FF, §2, $3.50 der to shed workers, in particular those
Nº5 - Class Struggle and Technological Change in Japan Since 1945.
who had organized strikes and mass meetings against the closure. It has recently re-
Subscribe to NSR (9 Issues): 180FF. £18, $31; airmail add 20%. Indicate first issue of subscripemerged under a new name, but some 400 tion. Payments to Pierre Rousset. Preferred: French francs payable in a bank located in workers are left on the dole.
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Recent events, beginning with the Labin
11 541 97 T. Next best: sterling payable in Britain or dollars paysable in USA. (Please indicate miners' strike of last April and May, show that we are dealing with a real strike movement in Yugoslavia, which is bound to grow in scope and militancy. But just as the
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December 21, 1987 • Internationa/ Viewpoint
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