The protesters urged the factory's management and the state authorities to recognise their right to severance pay and years of service and to revoke the management's decision of 3 December 1991 to sack 2,119 workers because they failed to report to the exiled factory management in time.
Speaking on behalf of the Association of "Borovo" Workers which organised the protest and which represents some 4,500 former employees, president Mirko Grahorac said the association was not representing only the interests of former employees of Serb nationality as often claimed.
"This is no tree-trunk revolution or a rebellion of an ethnic group. This is a social rebellion," Grahorac said alluding to the 1990s rebellion of Croatian Serbs. He said the protesters would give the government time until March 20 to deal with their requests otherwise they would stage protests until the problem was solved.
The association's secretary, Savo Davidovic, said that the association had been trying for six years to regulate the status of workers who on 3 December 1991 were collectivelly sacked, as well as the status of some 2,000 employees who were sent into retirement in the meantime without severance pay and that of some 400 workers who ended up unemployed when the company declared bankruptcy.
The government set up a commission to deal with the problem, but it met last in late 2005, when it determined the legal as well as the political basis to regulate the status of some 4,500 former employees, Davidovic said.
The commission determined the right to 1,500 kuna of severance pay per year of service for workers whose work contracts were cancelled on 3 December 1991 and 1,000 kuna per year of service for workers who worked in Borovo during the war, and decided that they should be enabled to exercise their rights within a period of 15 days.
"We are referring to the Labour Act and the government's regulation of 1991 which clearly states that a worker does not have to go to work during a period of war because he or she is prevented by force majeur," said Davidovic.
He also cited an agreement of several years ago recognising the right to severance pay and years of service for 1,746 former employees of Croat nationality.
The protesters were also addressed by a vice-president of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS) and Vukovar County deputy prefect Jovan Ajdukovic, who said that the issue of rights of former Borovo employees was the basis of Croatian democracy and the survival of Croatian Serbs.