Nervousness in Yugoslavia

Press, 10 April 1987, Page 20

Nervousness in Yugoslavia

As Poland’s did in 1980, this year’s wave of strikes in Yugoslavia seems to have started quite spontaneously. As in Poland, the strikes were set off by an economic grievance: a lot of Yugoslavia’s workers are angry with the Federal Government in Belgrade for trying to withdraw the wage increases introduced at the end of last year to help people cope with the country’s 100 per cent plus inflation. Could the Yugoslav protests follow the Polish pattern in a more important way — and turn political? Probably not. For one thing, the number of people on strike seems to be falling (though it could rise again as more categories of workers are hit by the wage freeze announced last month). So far the work stoppages have remained just that: there have been no marches or demonstrations.

Yugoslavia has no organisation capable of co-ordinating the strikes; its fragmented opposition has little contact with, let alone influence on, workers and farmers; and it has no independent body with the nationwide influence of Poland’s Catholic Church to lend some support to the strikers. Still the Government is nervous and is taking no chances. Mr Banko Mikulic, the Federal Prime Minister, hinted in an interview published in “Der Spiegel” on the eve of his visit to West Germany this week that he would be prepared to use the army to “protect the constitutional order.” The strikers had been particularly outraged by the fact that February’s wage freeze had coincided with hefty increases in the price of such staples as edible oil, sugar and meat. On March 20 the Government

brought in a freeze on some prices. Four days later it announced that there would be “some flexibility” in the pay freeze for particularly hard cases. The flexibility seems fairly generous, providing relief for workers in tourism, construction, shipbuilding, health, education and agriculture. The comparison with Poland is not entirely idle. Few people reckoned, in the early summer of 1980, that the Polish upheaval would go as far as it did. Yugoslavia’s Communist Party is deeply divided over how much free-market and free-speech it can let the country have without endangering its own power.

When a miserable economic performance leads men to down tools in a communist country, and the ruling party is at odds with itself, something peculiar is happening. Copyright — The Economist