State-Owned Electronics Group is
Target of 2-Day Job Action
NIS, Serbia, May 9 (Reuters) — More than 10,000 workers of Serbian electronics group NIS (EI-Nis) staged the second day of a strike on Thursday, demanding payment of overdue wages and a stake in the company. "We will continue the strike until our demands are met," Velja Pavlovic from the strikers' committee told Reuterss. "We want to work and to earn money for living."Workers have called on management to pay out wages overdue since last year. They also demand the state-owned group changes its ownership structure and awards employees a stake of at least 51 percent. "Employees of some of the 42 companies within the EI-Nis group have not received their salaries from December last year," Pavlovic said. The strikers have asked the local authorities in Nis, an industrial town about 200 km (120 miles) south of Belgrade, to exempt them from paying overdue utility bills. "They (the city government) have promised to freeze our obligations until June 30," Pavlovic said.
On Wednesday, several thousand strikers were reported to have gathered in the town centre where police prevented them from forcing their way into the city assembly hall. Workers also called on the republican government of Serbia, which together with Montenegro forms rump Yugoslavia, to place import restrictions on a wide range of components produced by EI-Nis to protect its flagging production. "We don't want (central bank governor Dragoslav) Avramovic to print the money, but (we ask for) the redistribution of available funds," he said. Local authorities in Nis have exempted EI-Nis from paying corporate utility bills for the past two years and have agreed to postpone payments due for the current year.
The strike coincides with a meeting of prominent economists and bankers in Nis to discuss problems of the banking and industrial sectors during rump Yugoslavia's transition to a more free-market economic system. Central bank governor Avramovic, credited with ridding Yugoslavia of the world's worst hyperinflation in 1993, over the past weeks has faced growing demands to relax his tight monetary policy to help the country's cash-strapped industry.
His refusal to revert to the printing presses has also put him at loggerheads with the Socialist government of Slobodan Milosevic, who is likely to face elections in Serbia before the end of the year and federal elections in 1997.
Berserkistan is a world news service of Michael Linder Productions, Inc.
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