Page 168 - Mellinato, Giulio, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2022. Complex Gateways. Labour and Urban History of Maritime Port Cities: The Northern Adriaticin a Comparative Perspective. Koper: University of Primorska Press.
P. 168
plex Gateways
Did the Port of Koper workers manifest their position regarding the
reform by foot? It would be wrong to infer that the workers of the Port of
Koper went on strike against the reforms as such. The strike was clearly
limited to the immediate problems of wages and working conditions. And
after all, the first major recorded strike in socialist Slovenia/Yugoslavia
took place in Trbovlje, in 1958 (Hadalin 2018, 144–8), years before the se-
rious market turn of the reforms. It was not exclusively the introduction
of a market economy that sparked unrest among the workers. It would be
more correct to conclude that the gradual ‘liberalization’ and relaxation
of the regime since the late 1950s, which was by no means the outcome of
market principles, allowed the resistance of workers to be manifested in
such a form, and to reach the point where articles on ‘work stoppages’ ap-
peared in the press. But if this was the case, what forms did earlier resist-
ance take? The same liberties noted in the case of the workers also apply
to Party members, who enjoyed far greater freedom to express their dis-
sent and concerns than at any previous point.
Yet it is clear that the reforms of 1965 made life much more precari-
ous for the workers: they were easier to fire, prices went up, and wages be-
came tied solely to the performance of the company, like in any capitalist
country. All the while, many hardships experienced in the first decade of
the socialist project persisted.
It may seem strange, but Petrinja correctly illustrated the ‘wage men-
tality’ of some workers: ‘I came here to make money and not to work.’
Nationalist prejudice aside, this statement was grounded in the banal
fact that workers wanted to earn as much as possible for as little work
as possible. What appears as idleness is in fact the diametrical opposite
of the logic of capitalist exploitation in its most basic form: to extract as
much living labour for as little reward as possible. In the concrete histori-
cal situation, it was a response to the conditions of hyperexploitation ex-
perienced by the Port of Koper workers in the second half of the 1960s.
As such it made sense, regardless of the best intentions (the development
of the Port of Koper) of managers, including Petrinja. Going three shifts
with no breaks might have been a heroic accomplishment in the histo-
ry of any socialist construction, but, at the end of the day, it was still hy-
perexploitation. ‘Non-work habit’ rather than ‘work habit’, that is, refus-
al of work, is by no means confined to premodern/preindustrial cultures,
it is also a basic resistance against discipline and subsumption to capi-
tal, as Gisela Bock put it in order to explain the resistance of immigrant
168
Did the Port of Koper workers manifest their position regarding the
reform by foot? It would be wrong to infer that the workers of the Port of
Koper went on strike against the reforms as such. The strike was clearly
limited to the immediate problems of wages and working conditions. And
after all, the first major recorded strike in socialist Slovenia/Yugoslavia
took place in Trbovlje, in 1958 (Hadalin 2018, 144–8), years before the se-
rious market turn of the reforms. It was not exclusively the introduction
of a market economy that sparked unrest among the workers. It would be
more correct to conclude that the gradual ‘liberalization’ and relaxation
of the regime since the late 1950s, which was by no means the outcome of
market principles, allowed the resistance of workers to be manifested in
such a form, and to reach the point where articles on ‘work stoppages’ ap-
peared in the press. But if this was the case, what forms did earlier resist-
ance take? The same liberties noted in the case of the workers also apply
to Party members, who enjoyed far greater freedom to express their dis-
sent and concerns than at any previous point.
Yet it is clear that the reforms of 1965 made life much more precari-
ous for the workers: they were easier to fire, prices went up, and wages be-
came tied solely to the performance of the company, like in any capitalist
country. All the while, many hardships experienced in the first decade of
the socialist project persisted.
It may seem strange, but Petrinja correctly illustrated the ‘wage men-
tality’ of some workers: ‘I came here to make money and not to work.’
Nationalist prejudice aside, this statement was grounded in the banal
fact that workers wanted to earn as much as possible for as little work
as possible. What appears as idleness is in fact the diametrical opposite
of the logic of capitalist exploitation in its most basic form: to extract as
much living labour for as little reward as possible. In the concrete histori-
cal situation, it was a response to the conditions of hyperexploitation ex-
perienced by the Port of Koper workers in the second half of the 1960s.
As such it made sense, regardless of the best intentions (the development
of the Port of Koper) of managers, including Petrinja. Going three shifts
with no breaks might have been a heroic accomplishment in the histo-
ry of any socialist construction, but, at the end of the day, it was still hy-
perexploitation. ‘Non-work habit’ rather than ‘work habit’, that is, refus-
al of work, is by no means confined to premodern/preindustrial cultures,
it is also a basic resistance against discipline and subsumption to capi-
tal, as Gisela Bock put it in order to explain the resistance of immigrant
168
