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Where did the money
disappear? Department store workers in Tuzla were left without wages The reality of Bosnia and Herzegovina hits hard at the 150 department store workers in Zivimce, close to Tuzla. For a long time, they have not received their salaries. After an intervention by the commerce trade union, the company was told to pay. Until now, only part of the workers - local union representatives say management favourites - have received their claims. The angry workers are threatening to escalate their struggle by setting up road blocks in the region. The department store is the only part which is left of a company, which used to run a chain of shops in the region. The other units have been privatised, as a part of the small scale privatisation that lead to mainly store managers taking over their shops. Workers now say that a major part of the department store's assets has disappeared. When they realised this, they locked the department store and stopped management from entering. Now, a company manager is said to have been arrested in this connection. The commerce trade union is now trying to help the workers get their pay arrears. Government authorities have set up a special commission, with a trade union representative included, to find out what really has happened. Fikret Plivcic, the union's organising director in Sarajevo, still believes that a solution will be found within the next month. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, workers frequently experience that they are not getting paid. Sometimes this is because of a real lack of money, sometimes there is corruption in the background. The basic problem is of course that the country's economy continues to be in a critical state.
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