Deindustrijalizacija i radnički otpor - Pokret za slobodu

Stefanović’s CEO Aleksandar Radovanović also agreed that the privatesecurity force that caused the March incidents wouldn’t be hired againand that Jugoremedija workers will provide their own security. However,on August 16, about 120 members of Stefanović's private securityforce came into the factory and started a fight with the workers. Thepolice arrived to separate the two-sides but ignored worker-shareholderdemands that the private security force must leave since they hadn’tbeen authorized by the management to be on the premises of the Jugoremedijafactory.After a few days, on August 19, Stefanović's private army provokedanother fight and the Zrenjanin police used it as an excuse to concludethat they no longer have control over the situation. Serbia’s thenMinister of Interior, Dragan Jočić, sent special police units from Belgrade(the so called „Gendarmerie“), commanded by the police generalMilivoje Markov, to stabilize the situation.Markov immediately called Deurić and three more strike leadersfor talks at the police station. Upon their arrival at the station theywere told that they were being arrested. After separating the strikersfrom their leadership in this way, Markov ordered that his unit kick theremaining workers out of Jugoremedija. Deurić and the other threestrike-leaders spent the next 10 days in solitary confinement, while thepolice initiated criminal proceedings against them for ‘causing a publicdanger.’ The very next day Stefanović began firing workers. In next fewmonths 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’sother small-shareholders, local unions and left activist groups andintellectuals from Serbia and abroad - through direct action and withinthe courts to prove that Stefanović had broken his contract with thestate. In the summer of 2006, Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein wereamong the many intellectuals and activists from around the world whoaddressed Serbian President Boris Tadić and Prime-Minister VojislavKoštunica with letters of support for the Jugoremedija workers.We won in the end, and on 1 March 2007 Jugoremedija became theonly factory in Serbia operated by worker-shareholders! After the courtcanceled the state’s contract with Stefanović, all small-shareholders(both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ shareholders), voted for the workers toestablish their own management in the factory. Zdravko Deurić is nowserving as the CEO of Jugoremedija.323