“Krivaja is to blame for everything good,“ it was the slogan that used to represent the factory from Zavidovici.
This company was the largest center of the wood industry in the former Yugoslavia. Before the war, Zavidovici had 50,000 inhabitants, and 12,000 people worked in this factory, therefore, almost every family from Zavidovici and the surrounding area had someone who worked in Krivaja. The company cooperated with the whole world… Europe, Asia, Africa, America.
The parquet that many still have in their homes was made in Krivaja, the racks that generations grew up with came from Krivaja, it is interesting to note that Krivaja produced over a million chairs a year.
Krivaja was founded in the Austro-Hungarian era in 1884, and its development escalated after the Second World War. Working in the 70s and 80s of the last century in this place meant having a secure existence (free apartments for workers, loans for houses, cheap furniture for furnishing the household and a solid salary).
After the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the beginning of privatization, everything changed. Instead of the successes of the BiH giant, its bankruptcy, sales, layoffs and worker protests were increasingly talked about in the media.
Workers last protested in February of this year in front of the Federation of BiH (FBiH) Government building in Sarajevo, demanding the payment of unpaid wages and the bridging of seniority.
The workers claim that a hundred of them meet the conditions for retirement, but due to fact that their seniority is not bridged, they are unable to exercise their rights.
A special problem is faced by the former workers of “Krivaja” who, due to changes in the law, gained, and not long after, lost the right to retire due to lack of bridged seniority.
Regarding the situation in Krivaja, the bankruptcy administrator of the industrial enterprise (IP) Krivaja, Hamdija Muratovic, was contacted.
“Krivaja was a symbol of the BiH industry, the classic working class no longer exists. The plants are currently not working, we are waiting for everything to be resolved through the courts. I can tell you this much, I feel threatened and cannot speak about the state of the judiciary. Contact them, they are competent and decide on the Krivaja case,” Muratovic told, Radio Sarajevo reports.
