Sindikati i radništvo u procesima transformacije: (dis)kontinuiteti radničkih borbi u Bosni i Hercegovini
Unions and Workers in the Transformation Processes: (dis)Continuities of Workers’ Struggles in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Author(s): Anđela Pepić
Subject(s): Economic history, Economic policy, Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Present Times (2010 - today), Post-Communist Transformation
Published by: Durieux
Keywords: privatisation; transformation; workers’ struggles; unions; Bosnia and Herzegovina;
Summary/Abstract: Over three decades since the beginning of the transformation and privatisation processes in former SFRY, and particularly in BiH, the outcomes are deindustrialized societies, atomized workers divided on different grounds, large industrial complexes completely ruined and their workers empoverished and fully disempowered through layoff s, bankruptcy and liquidation procedures, and the union organizing and actions are reduced to a minimum. Within this context, this paper analyses perception of (former) workers of three former industrial giants in BiH - Rudi Čajavec, Energoinvest, Aluminij - on the privatisation and transformation processes, role of the workers and unions within those processes, as well as the outcomes of the processes for unions and the trust of the workers in unions. Through the set of interviews with (former) workers of above mentioned three enterprises, we analyse the patterns and discourses emerging from their statements, shedding additional, workers perspective on the processes that have been going on in former SFRY and BiH spaces since the eighties. The results point out several interconnected discourses that are combined together: privatisation as stealing and robbing off workers, disempowered workers within the privatisation processes, i.e. lack of agency due to loss of power-position, politics of fear incorporated in workers’ and unions’ (non-)action, division among workers, (dis)continuities of union struggles, and finally, loss of trust in unions and labour organizing. Based on the research results, we conclude that the strategies and tactics for pacification of the workers’ rebellion and union struggles, implemented during the privatisation processes by various political, ethno–national and economic elites, resulted in complete smashing of the workers’ rebellion, division of workers and union fragmentation, thus disabling any wide-scale organizing of workers in the class struggle.

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