I work like a horse, live like a mouse and eat like a dog

The title of this blog post is how Esad, a Bosnian migrant worker who formerly worked in Slovenia, described his labour time in that country. Esad, though only 30, both speaks and looks much older than his years. Physical toil has changed him, but he has not lost the fire to seek both a better life in his own country and what he is owed by the foreign employers who used him for labour, without pay for thirteen months, and then revoked his visa. Esad and about 20 other workers from the northwestern city of Cazin, were offered to a chance to get a foreign work visa in Slovenia by a contractor for work on construction sites. They were brought to Slovenia, lived in 'barracks' of about 120 sq. m per 60 workers, sometimes were only given 5 euros/week for food expenses, worked 12-24 hour days without rest, and, worst of all, did not get their monthly pay cheques - most of the workers never got a pay cheque at all. When the workers began to complain, their employer revoked their work visa (Slovenian work visas bind you to one employer, if you lose your job, you lose your visa), and they had to return to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The employer in question is a man named Zoran Perković, and he owes the workers somewhere between 50000 and 60000 euros. As the workers were returned to B&H when their visas were revoked, they were unable to file charges against their Slovenian employer who was protected by the B&H workers' citizenship - they were unable to re-enter the Schengen zone with their passports, in order to file charges in Slovenia. Over the past 6 months, the migrant workers, along with a group of wonderful tireless faculty and students from the University of Ljubljana (organized under the banner of 'Invisible Workers of the World,' and a group of faculty from the University of Sarajevo's Faculty of Political Sciences (mostly the energetic and fantastic Prof. Nermina Mujagić) have been actively seeking solutions to their political and economic problems via protests, hunger strikes, academic and media engagements. On June 28th, we held a public forum for the B&H public about the problem of migrant workers at the Faculty of Political Sciences here in Sarajevo. In the morning, the workers spoke about their own experiences living as labourers in Slovenia. In the afternoon, a more academic approach allowed different speakers to lay out some analytic/conceptual problems about migrant labour generally, and labourer and economic problems in the former Yugoslav region generally. (Yours truly spoke about changing discourses on labour rights in the European Union from the 50s to today). Today, July 19th, there was an important protest held for these workers in Sarajevo. The protest involved a march through the whole center of the city. We started off at the Office of the High Representative, near the Grbavica neighbourhood. Media turnout was great - all the major tv stations and the newspapers sent representatives, and apparently we got a 3-4 minute segment on the evening news of most of these stations, which is fantastic. From the Office of the High Representative we marched to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and ended up camped out at the Slovenian Embassy in the Bembaša area. At each stop, workers took the megaphone/microphone and spoke to the audience about their experiences, frustrations and desires for change.
On the picture just below is Dževad, an extraordinary man with whom i talked for almost two hours today. He told me that the worst part of his experience was coming home to his parents and having to ask them for money. "I did not want to experience that. You go abroad to work so that you can come home with something for everyone, chocolates for your mom, you say to your dad, enjoy this and give him a hundred euros. But I did not want this." The police of Sarajevo canton provided escorts for us the whole way, and stopped traffic all over the city for us. They did this without permission of their higher authorities, but because they wanted to support the workers' protest.

At the ministry of foreign affairs, diplomats drove by, walked by but no one stopped to take a look or listen.
This story changes for the better though upon arrival at the Slovenian embassy. With a group of really eager young people from 'Dosta' Sarajevo, a show was arranged for the embassy. There was music playing, speeches that were given, call and answer moments with the public, and a lot of cheering and applauses. Though many many security officials were guarding the embassy, the atmosphere was relaxed, and many of the workers, especially Esad were speaking, through a microphone directly to the embassy officials though, through closed windows. Alternating between speeches and music, such as Bob Marley and Dubioza Kolektiv, it was apparent that nobody was planning on leaving the scene of the protest. And the resolution? Well, you will have to wait until tomorrow...since I am very tired. But let's just say that it was a great end of the day, and hopefully a good start to some larger discussions on the question of workers' rights...