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Demonstrators in front of the Belgrade 5th Gymnasium (Photo: Mašina)
“It’s Impossible to Sleep Through the Coming Day” – The Significance of Student and Trade Union Alliances for May Day
M.M. (Mašina) 29.04.2025
This May Day we could see, for the first time in Serbia, a protest that will bring together all five trade union federations. The students occupying university buildings are undoubtedly most responsible for this, as their activities in recent months have changed the social context to which the unions could not remain silent. After a series of meetings between union working bodies and students, and agreement on joint work on specific amendments to the Labour Law and the Strike Law, the moment has come to unite on the streets.
There is no better occasion for this than May Day – the international workers’ holiday – and our interviewees agree that this alliance and joint appearance at the May Day protest could be a turning point for both the student and labour movements.
On May Day, unions will organise their previously announced traditional gatherings at different locations, joined by columns of students coming from various directions towards Belgrade city centre. According to announcements, they will all, along with citizens, gather at 2 p.m. in front of the Government of Serbia, where tributes will be paid to the victims of the canopy collapse in Novi Sad, followed by speeches from student representatives and union presidents.
Raško Karaman, a Biology Faculty student and member of the Workers’ Issues Working Unit of the student occupation, told Mašina that they recognised the importance of the working class in the struggle for systemic change early in their activities.
“We quickly established communication with union and non-union workers’ organisations, developing cooperation and exploring the possibility of joint action. It was clear to us that their position in society is extremely poor, and that the means by which they would fight for it has been completely rendered meaningless. We find the cause of this situation in the problematic Labour Law and Strike Law,” Karaman told Mašina.
In accordance with this position, students initiated a joint meeting with all union federations and the formation of a legal working group to address amendments to these laws. The idea was for unions to agree on amendments and to fight for them in the social climate created by student occupations and protests.
May Day is a significant date for both the workers’ and student movements. It marks Labour Day but also six months since the tragedy in Novi Sad.
“This is an opportunity to publicly demonstrate our readiness for joint action, and to present the work of the legal working group. At the beginning of this week, we organised a meeting with the presidents of the union federations where we agreed on organising a joint gathering on 1 May at 2 p.m. in front of the Government. On the same day, before this action, the unions will organise individual gatherings that they have already registered and for which they have secured logistical preparation, and students will come in an organised manner to support them,” Karaman told our portal.
The 1 May gathering is, as announced by the students, just the beginning of more active involvement of unions in the struggle for systemic change. They will present joint demands to the Government that day, while, again according to student announcements, at the joint meeting, unions expressed clear readiness to radicalise their struggle if the demands are not met.
“General Strike!” (Photo Mašina)
90% of Employees Don’t Have a Living Wage
Union protests in Serbia are not common, reminds Vladimir Simović, programme coordinator for labour rights at the Centre for Emancipatory Politics, who emphasises that every opportunity to highlight the position of workers is important – therefore, the May Day protest is significant.
“This is the day to bring concrete demands for improving the current situation into the public sphere, and the situation is very bad. Wages are low, 90% of employees don’t have a living wage. Working hours far exceed what is legally guaranteed. Serbia is traditionally at the very top of European countries in terms of working hours that employees spend at work. Occupational safety and health standards are inadequate. In Serbia, on average once a week someone loses their life at work, and almost no one is ever held accountable for this. Workplace harassment is ubiquitous, and union organising is sabotaged. There are too many problems. Employers too often treat workers as disposable resources. Such a situation is unsustainable,” Simović believes.
Our interviewee believes that students have well identified “probably the most important allies” – the workers. Because, our interviewee believes that without synergy between the working class and the existing student movement, it would be difficult to change anything in our society.
“Now we have a situation, for the first time in a very long time, where unions are combining their capacities. I think this would not have been possible, in this way, without the student movement which enjoys great trust among the people. Students have used this legitimacy to bring unions to the same table. The announced joint struggle for amendments to the Labour Law and Strike Law is no longer merely declarative but is also manifested in the announcement of the May Day protest. This gives us hope that things are moving in the right direction,” Simović told Mašina.
The Gathering Goes Directly Against the Ruling Group’s Core Strategy
Dr Nada Sekulić, a full professor in the sociology department at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, agrees that the joint appearance of students and unions at the May Day protest is a very significant event, and she shared with us several reasons why she holds this view.
“One of them is that until now, no one has managed to bring together the five largest unions in Serbia, which have quite a number of disagreements with each other. In that sense, this gathering has the potential for consolidating worker organisation, which is an important, and in all likelihood, a fundamental prerequisite for the Labour Law to be changed at all, and this alliance certainly does not please the ruling structures in society, which since Milošević’s fall have systematically sided with employers, reducing workers’ rights, in order to enable faster privatisation and attract foreign capital in particular. So, such a gathering goes directly against the ruling group’s core strategy regarding how Serbia should develop, so unified pressure from all unions is definitely needed,” Sekulić believes.
As a second important reason, she points out that this alliance broadens the front of social resistance in the current rebellion of students and citizens against the corrupt regime and disregard for the law.
“This is probably what could worry the government the most, because their main stronghold so far has been that there has been no resistance in institutions outside the university and education sector. If workers were to join, I dare say, this government would definitely fall and very quickly,” Sekulić tells Mašina.
However, our interviewee emphasises that the question remains how much unions can massively mobilise their membership for broader social issues.
“Workers are most willing to strike over concrete matters that concern their immediate existence. That is now the ’thousand-dollar question’ – have the students managed to sufficiently motivate citizens across Serbia to engage through strikes at their workplaces, and not just through beautiful receptions for students and through street protests which, as we can see, although they worry the government, have not been able to change the corrupt system for five months, with repression becoming increasingly obvious,” Sekulić believes.
The third important thing in the May Day alliance, according to the professor from the Faculty of Philosophy, is that it shows that students are looking for new strategies of struggle, “aware that everything that has been done so far, which is extremely significant in itself regardless of what will happen in society going forward, has not yielded the desired results – the government will not fulfil the students’ demands, because that simply means not only that they lose power, but also that many of them will end up in prison and be left without predatorily acquired property.”
The alliance on the occasion of May Day that we are talking about is also significant from the aspect of union struggle, and Sekulić believes that unions could strengthen their position in relation to employers and the state if they managed to maintain mutual dialogue and a unified front.
“I think it’s very important that unions are waking up and acting as agents of broader social change, not just immediate existential interests related to specific situations in specific workplaces. Until now, they have not been in that position, and their partners have been ’vertically’ positioned – the state or employers, who have actually controlled or bribed them. This is now a horizontal connection in which such kind of management does not exist, and that is a very good sign,” Sekulić tells Mašina.
She believes that sufficiently strong pressure, with a demand for changing specific provisions in the Labour Law, and insistence on the introduction and implementation of collective agreements (today, only about 20% of workers have collective agreements) would certainly lead to progress, especially in, as she says, a situation in which the ruling group must fight on multiple fronts, “and are then ready to give way somewhere in order to strengthen their positions elsewhere where they have been weakened.”
She sees a problem in the fact that the alliance came after five months of exhausting resistance.
“If this alliance of workers and students had happened at the beginning, we would probably already have new elections today, not just the election of a new government similar to the previous one. In any case, I believe these processes are unstoppable, it’s just a question of how quickly they will unfold. Serbia has begun to awaken, and that awakening process will certainly continue. When you wake up in the morning with your eyes wide open, it’s impossible to sleep through the coming day,” Sekulić concludes.
M.M.
May Day 2018, Belgrade (Photo: Mašina)
Unions and Students Together on the Streets on May Day
A.G.A (Mašina) 30.04.2025
The five largest unions in Serbia will tomorrow, May Day, organise gatherings in Belgrade where they will announce demands for changes to labour legislation, and then together with students in occupation will participate in a protest in front of the Government of Serbia building.
The protest will be dedicated to marking May Day – the International Day of Struggle for Workers’ Rights, with special emphasis on the poor state of labour legislation in Serbia.
As the United Trade Unions of Serbia “Sloga” states, this protest represents a continuation of the joint effort begun on 22 March at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, when students in occupation and representatives of the five largest union federations in Serbia signed an agreement on cooperation with the aim of improving labour rights, improving relations between unions and strengthening citizens’ trust in unions as true protectors of workers’ interests.
At yesterday’s meeting held at the Faculty of Law, University of Belgrade, representatives of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Serbia, the United Branch Unions “Nezavisnost” (Independence), the Association of Free and Independent Trade Unions, the United Trade Unions of Serbia “Sloga”, and the Confederation of Free Trade Unions spoke with students and reached a joint agreement on further cooperation, resolving previous misunderstandings.
Union Gatherings Before the Protest
The AFITU gathering will begin at 11 a.m. on the plateau by “Russian Tsar” in Knez Mihailova Street, and around 1 p.m. an address by the president of that union, Ranka Savić, is announced, after which at 1:30 p.m. the column will head towards the Government of Serbia building for the joint gathering of unions and students.
FITU is organising a gathering at 12 p.m. in Nikola Pašić Square, where the May Day Proclamation will be read. They will then proceed to the Government of Serbia for the joint protest and submit their conclusions and demands. FITU has announced that on May 1, they will mark Labour Day and FITU Day, April 27, that is, “two dates that symbolise the workers’ struggle for greater rights, higher wages and a dignified life.”
The “Nezavisnost” Union will mark May Day at 11:30 a.m. at the Dimitrije Tucović monument in Slavija Square, after which they will submit an initiative to the Government of Serbia for changes to the Labour Law and Strike Law. At that gathering, the “Free Daily News” prepared by a group of RTV journalists will be broadcast, and a concert by the first Serbian children’s rock choir – RocHoiR Kids will be held.
The Confederation of Free Trade Unions has not made a special decision on marking Labour Day this year in its bodies, but in accordance with the decision made on participation with other unions in changes to “workers’ laws”, it has accepted the conclusion on participation in this May Day action.
As “Sloga” states, the crisis of capitalism is deepening, social inequalities are growing, democratic freedoms and union rights are under attack around the world, and increasing military spending is pushing humanity into a war economy that takes away workers’ means of life and dignity.
“Because of all this, May Day has long not been a holiday – it is a day of struggle. See you on the streets!” the statement from this union says.
A.G.A (Mašina)
https://www.masina.rs/sindikati-i-studenti-zajedno-na-ulicama-prvog-maja/
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