ArcelorMittal, Zenica: the logic of collective action

This article explores a recent successful threat of industrial action at the ArcelorMittal steel plant at Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Building in interviews with trade unions leaders, the author locates the campaign against the background of the economic, political and social situation in the country as well as the difficulties these impose on effective trade union organisation which, with certain exceptions, exists at a low level particularly in the private sector. Other aspects also make trade unions unattractive, not least to young people. Consequently, examples of industrial action which are successful are not only are of practical assistance in raising the wages of the workers involved, they also provide powerful examples of the continuing logic of collective action and, thus, a strong motivation to seek out trade union membership. Furthermore, in a country beset by the political problems that Bosnia and Herzegovina has, examples of strike action - of workers simply getting on with their everyday normal lives - also act to reassert what is most important by documenting citizens in their lives as workers not as ethnicities.