B92.net: 300 workers of "Fiat" blocked highway, refusing to talk to Prime Minister

B92.net: 300 workers of "Fiat" blocked highway, refusing to talk to Prime Minister

As B92.net has learned, the workers rejected the Prime Minister's proposal to come to the Serbian Government for talks today at 4.30 p.m.

First, they asked for a severance pay of 1.000 euros per year, and today they are asking for 2.000 per year, which is 10 times more than other workers in Serbia receive.

They rejected Fiat's proposal to receive 17.000 euros, a minimum salary of 800 euros a month and to have a guaranteed job when they return to Serbia.

Some workers of Kragujevac's "Fiat" arrived in Belgrade in several buses to protest. As they say, they decided to block the Gazelle bridge. Politicians from the "Moramo" coalition, Biljana Stojković, Dobrica Veselinović, Aleksandar Ćuta Jovanović, Nebojša Zelenović, as well as People's Party officials Stefan Jovanović and Miroslav Aleksić welcomed them in front of the Sava Center.

Prime Minister Ana Brnabić said yesterday that Fiat workers in Kragujevac decided to take to the streets and organize protests instead of continuing negotiations with the Government, and told them that they could always contact her to continue the talks, but not through the media.

"I am here, they know where I am, I am there for them, day, night, weekend, whatever... I do not see what they are looking for on the street instead of in the Government," Brnabić said. She said that Fiat workers did not wait for the process of applying for a job abroad to be completed.

"We want the workers to be satisfied, to provide for those families, but before the application process was completed, they came out and said that negotiations with the government were over. I cannot force anyone to talk and negotiate," the prime minister said. When asked by journalists what workers can expect when it comes to severance pay, the Prime Minister said that it was a matter of mutual conversation, and not a conversation through the media. She notes that the workers took to the streets and said that the negotiations had failed.

"They want to take to the streets before they want to come to the government to talk. They have literally left the negotiations that were underway," Brnabić pointed out. The traffic in the rest of the city is slow, and on Branko's bridge - traffic jams have been created in the direction of the Old Town.

The Autokomanda is crowded on the bridge.