Deindustrijalizacija i radnički otpor - Pokret za slobodu

The Bale of JugoremedijaJugoremedija, 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 Jugoremedijato a notorious mafia figure from the Milošević era - one JovicaStefanović (“Nini”). At the time he purchased the state’s 42% share,Stefanović was wanted by Interpol for cigarette smuggling. He wasknown to be part of the entourage of that godfather of Serbia’s cigarettebusiness during the 1990s, Marko Milošević, the son of the moreinfamous Slobodan.Aside from the 16,5 million EUR for the Jugoremedija shares, Niniwas also obliged under the terms of the privatization agreement to investin the reconstruction of the factory in order to obtain EuropeanGMP (good manufacturing practice) certification for the factory’s productionlines. After finishing the investment, he would then be allowedto ‘recapitalize’ Jugoremedija in order to increase his share and becomethe enterprise’s majority shareholder. The Jugoremedija workersand the other small, ‘external’ shareholders weren’t informed aboutthe second part of this contract – i.e. that the state had actually soldStefanović not only the 42% of Jugoremedija that it held, but that italso wanted him to become majority owner without consulting thefirm’s 4,500 remaining shareholders.There’s nothing unusual in all this, however, since at this point inthe process of Serbian privatization - only a year after the new law wasadopted - there was no legal framework whatsoever that could provideprotection for the rights of workers or small shareholders. For example,the Law on Free Access to Public Information was adopted onlyin November 2004, and its implementation started almost a full yearafter that. This means that in 2002 worker-shareholders had no legalavenues through which they could even obtain the contract regulatingthe sale of 42% of their own company.Actually, it was through workers’ struggles in factories like Jugoremedijathat the Serbian government was eventually forced to admitthat workers and small-shareholders have some rights in the privatizationprocess. However, back in 2002, any workers’ group that triedto dispute irregularities in the privatization process would have been321