Death of a Zrenjanin Sinvoz's worker, Radislav Stojanov (40), during a protest rally held in Dom Sindikata building, Belgrade (January 16), attracted much public attention. A couple

of days later, dark faces of several hundred workers who walked him to his "final resting place" at Temisvar cemetery in Zrenjanin did not hide the sorrow and pain, the despair and anger, which were heard also in the murmurs around the grave. The interest in the tragedy grew when it turned out this was the fifth worker of the same company to have died. Feelings accompanying individual suffering, when woven into a dense net of events, sometimes grow into a more or less powerful tide of different emotions - compassion with the victims and the fury at those who caused their suffering. The flurry of emotions can be so overwhelming, intense and lasting to overshadow the real events that generate these individual sorrows. Or it can disperse in an
		Radislav Stojanov

almost endless series of different tragedies which the media, especially those inclined to sensationalism, exploit day after day, year after year, to create a mass sentiment that we are witnessing endless suffering and can do nothing to help ourselves.
Instead of guessing what plagued hearts of the deceased before they "left this world", we shall look at what is going on where they "left from". We will talk here about what happens to concrete persons, what drives them to despair and what they do to break away from it.

As we said, the worker Radislav Stojanov died during a rally. It was a protest rally of workers-shareholders in the Zrenjanin-based company Sinvoz.
The factory for railcar production and overhaul - Sinvoz - initiated privatization back in 1989,

in conformity with the Law on Socially-Owned Capital. By 1993, the company workers bought out 14% of the company shares. After that, the privatization was halted, due to hyperinflation. It was resumed in 2004, in line with the new Privatization Law, when 30% of shares were distributed to workers and pensioners without compensation. The state sold the remaining 56% of the capital
		The new factory for overhaul of diesel and electric railcars opened in 1975

to Nebojsa Ivkovic, who participated in the auction as an individual and whose business or entrepreneurial capacities are unknown. Ahead of the sale of the 56% of the capital, the company employed some 870 workers.
In accordance with the agreement signed with the Privatization Agency, Ivkovic was required to invest in Sinvoz, which would grant him the right to increase his stake. He apparently fulfilled his commitment in 2005, when he presented five battered diesel-electric locomotives, acquired to be cut into scrap metal, as an investment into fixed assets. Qualified auditor, Privredni savetnik - Revizija company (Belgrade), certified on 11 August 2005 that the investment was made in line with the purchase agreement, after which Ivkovic was registered as the owner of 76% of Sinvoz shares.
Locomotives from the alleged investment today remain in the same condition they were in 2005 - resting on the same stands they came on, lacking wheels and even engines.
The workers-shareholders informed the Privatization Agency on several occasions about this "investments" and demanded that execution of contractual commitments be reviewed. The Agency, on its own initiative and at request of workers-shareholders, sent several auditors in Sinvoz (4 April 2004, 12 July and 24 October 2005, 17 April 2006 and 20 March 2007), and their reports always claimed that the investment was in conformity with the agreement. Small shareholders had firm reasons to doubt that the engines were acquired by Ivkovic, and believed that Sinvoz received them from ZTP Beograd railway company, as part of a 2005 settlement between the two firms. However, neither workers-shareholders nor Serbian Government's Anti-Corruption Board received relevant

		information from competent authorities, so they complained to the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance. Without any luck. As they were not paid their wages, Sinvoz workers went on a strike. The Ministry of Economy mediated and the strike was suspended after two weeks, but it turned out that the majority owner had no intention to meet the strikers' demands. In 2007, Ivkovic completely halted operations in the factory and started dismissing a growing number of workers as "redundant". Workers-shareholders organized several protest rallies that year, demanding that the Agency's agreement with Ivkovic be terminated. He, however, fired locksmith Mita Lisica, president of the Independent Union, who was employed in Sinvoz for over 20 years. In November 2007, a bankruptcy procedure was launched for Sinvoz. The main creditors were companies whose owner was also Ivkovic. Before
Mita Lisica

the bankruptcy was initiated, Sinvoz employed 470 workers. On the day when the company was declared bankrupt, they all lost their jobs.
When they found that Ivkovic was again trying to falsify the investments he was obligated to make, some 400 Sinvoz workers-shareholders blocked the factory on 28 December, demanding that the agreement with Ivkovic be terminated and the bankruptcy revoked. After many years of government's procrastination to assume its share of the responsibility for disposal of its property and for observance of laws and the agreement, and under the pressure of workers-shareholders' protest and the public, on 31 January, the line

ministry informed that the disputed agreement will be terminated. Protest leaders, headed by Mita Lisica, told representatives of the authorities they would not leave their offices till they receive a document confirming the annulment. We might commend the authorities for acting correctly, and even for showing certain sympathy for the workers' sufferings. However, the scrounged document was probably a

result of the government's apprehension that on that same day, 31 January, another crowd of desperate protesters would file in central Belgrade and disturb spectacular rallies of presidential hopefuls, whose camps were feuding ahead of the elections, promising a better life and freedom from all troubles, while circumventing the issues that really ail the people and push them into despair.

Instead of reaching a basic consensus on the cornerstone for reconstruction of the economy and the society - which would involve norms concerning ownership - once socially-owned property was simply erased, without any explanation as to what will replace it and how; therefore, it is uncertain on what new ownership relations is the far-reaching process of transition based on. And without having this firmly established by the constitution and laws, a lot of room is created for governmental arbitrariness and different forms of systemic corruption. Theft and plundering, much talked about, and countless scandals related with them, generate a very unfavorable climate for enterprise and business, and create completely unreliable living conditions for everyone, particularly for those at the bottom of or outside governmental hierarchy.

The government's ledger, which was once focused on "forcing us into socialism", is now deployed for the purpose of "forcing us into capitalism". Sacrifice in defense of "blood and

soil", while denying oneself life here and today, is also imposed as a model, especially to those who are not in the power or are distant from it, and who are reprimanded for their lack of "patriotism". This not only threatens barren existence of the people, but also prevents establishment of a normal state where precise norms - legal, ethical and political - exist and regulate ownership, "labor situation" and the model of government rule. Evidently, the most powerful individuals - financially and politically - are comfortable with having a
		Graduates of the fourth cycle of Railway Vocational Training School, which was a hub of revolutionary fighters in the Workshop and the town

limbo state, where there is no accounting - either for crimes or for plundering, or for the course and outcome of the transition.
The reasons to despair are abundant, not only because the old regime has regained strength, but also because of rigid insistence on the ideology and propagation of "forcing into wild capitalism", regardless of ownership and other constitutional, legal and ethical norms which capitalism itself does recognize.
If protests of workers-shareholders described here did not bring tangible and direct benefits for the workers, they may be of some use in sparking a more serious public

interest for their efforts to have a general regulation of property and civilized relations between owner and co-owners, and not only for their suffering, till they are killed. Only when the state assumes part of the responsibility for its property, and stops placing blame on other owners and workers, the otherwise painful and risky process of transition may lose some of its danger and no longer be a fountain of despair, from which people are trying to break away dramatically. Though unexpected of the people wrenching themselves from despair, these workers tell the cautionary tale against the great danger of proprietor's exclusiveness and ruthlessness and suggest the need for balancing different
		Sinvoz on the Yugoslav market

ideas, norms and believes in order to avoid describing anyone as "redundant", which has always been a ground for different totalitarian systems. And when this line is crossed, it makes sense to think about freedom and democracy and pursue that course, even in Serbia, today and tomorrow.