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23 August, 2010
ICEM Serbian affiliate Sindikat Nezavisnost, the Chemical, Non-Metal, Energy, and Mining Industries Union, will decide today if a proposal by the pharmaceutical concern Srbolek AD is good enough to end a 15-day strike by some 70 workers in Belgrade. On Friday, 20 August, a Serbian state mediation agency moderated an exchange of proposals between the union and company regarding this most recent strike over wage arrears.
The strike began on 9 August, and workers and Nezavisnost leaders have been subjected to physical and psychological abuse by managing director Jovica Stefanovic Nini and his hired security team. Workers of the privatized pharmaceutical producer and distributor have not been paid in six months, with social contributions, taxes, statutory severance packages, and retirement earnings also withheld.
A four-day strike in May 2010 resulted in retaliatory action being taken by the managing director against strike leaders. He unilaterally reduced the pay of union leaders by 60% then. Another strike over wage arrears occurred in August 2009.
The ICEM intervened on 11 August in the most recent strike, calling into question the extreme anti-social behavior of management, including overt discrimination against women workers who are pregnant or who have given birth since August 2009.
Following the first day of strike activity on 9 August, the company made a proposal through a state mediator that it would pay one month’s salary if workers halted the strike. Nezavisnost declined to consider the offer. The very next day, another trade union at a plant of Srbolek affiliated with the Sindikat Samostalni Federation of Serbia (SSSS) joined the strike, thus ratcheting up pressure on Stefanovic Nini.
But again security of Serbia’s third largest pharmaceutical company undertook brute tactics by prohibiting union leaders from entering the state mediation agency’s offices.
Finally, following near constant negotiations last week, state mediators crafted a set of proposals that appears to satisfy the strikers. Srbolek, for the first time since the outset of the strike, also submitted a proposal on 20 August that could end the strike. It is that proposal which union leaders and strikers will examine today.
The ICEM will continue to monitor the dispute and even if proposals are accepted to end the current strike, the Geneva-based Global Union Federation will follow future labour-management developments between Srbolek and trade unions.