[Intl-tobacco] Croatia: Tobacco Workers Protest Privatized Plant Closing

[robert weissman]

HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com
<http://www.chron.com> | Section: World news <http://www.chron.com/world>


/April 19, 2006, 11:21AM/


    Croatian Tobacco Workers Occupy Factory

*=A9 2006 The Associated Press*

ZAGREB, Croatia =97 The workers who have been occupying a tobacco factory
in Croatia's capital for nearly two weeks asked the chief state
prosecutor Wednesday to investigate their claims that the facility was
illegally sold to a local tobacco giant.

The prosecutor, Mladen Bajic, "informed us they were looking" at the
case, labor union leader Mario Ivekovic said after the meeting.

Bajic was not immediately available for comment.

Thirty-six employees of Tvornica Duhana Zagreb, or Zagreb Tobacco
Factory, seized the building earlier this month. They were responding to
a decision by the factory's owner _ Tvornica Duhana Rovinj, or Rovinj
Tobacco Factory _ to close down the facility and retire them.

The workers insist the privatization of the factory in 1993 was illegal
and demand that a court annuls the sale. The Rovinj factory bought the
Zagreb factory in 1998 and there were no protests then because it
continued working.

The workers, seen smoking and chatting inside the building Wednesday,
pledged to stay there until their demands are met. They plastered
factory windows with banners saying: "We just want to keep our jobs" and
"Enough of thefts!"

The workers, however, have not said what they believe was illegal about
the factory's sale.

The Rovinj factory insists its purchase of the Zagreb factory was legal
and that a previous state-run inspection found nothing wrong with it.
The factory has filed complaints with authorities that the workers are
trespassing, but the workers refuse to receive court requests for them
to appear at a hearing.

Rovinj Tobacco Factory, which holds a virtual monopoly on cigarette
production in Croatia, recently decided to move its whole production to
a northwestern region and use the Zagreb factory building for other
purposes.

The case reflects workers' woes in Croatia after most of the state-run
companies were privatized in the early 1990s as the country transformed
from a communist-style to market economy. Thousands of workers lost
their jobs in the process because factories, previously financed by the
state, had generally employed too many workers.