The SDSS said on Wednesday that it supports 4,200 former "Borovo" workers, mostly Serbs, who continued working after the Serb occupation of Vukovar. They were collectively fired by the exiled factory management on December 3, 1991. Since 2000, the workers have been demanding that their dismissal be revoked and years of service recognised and that they be given severance pay.
The leader of the association of those workers, Mirko Grahorac, yesterday announced that former employees of the "Borovo" footwear factory would stage a protest in front of the factory in Borovo Naselje in Vukovar on Thursday and insist on their demands even at the price of a new 'log revolution',
Grahorac was alluding to the setting up of roadblocks by ethnic Serbs in Serb-dominated areas at the start of the war to prevent the Croatian authorities from taking control of them.
"We support the endeavours of the workers exclusively within the existing legal norms, including the right to stage peaceful protest rallies, but we are resolutely against the announced 'log revolutions in the streets' and other radical measures," the SDSS party said in a statement today.
It also criticised Grahorac's attempts to disparage the party's vice president and parliamentary deputy, Milorad Pupovac. Grahorac described Pupovac as a Trojan horse, adding that he could no longer represent the interests of local Serbs.