On the evening of Friday, the 24^th of July, students – ex-workers of Broadway cinema in Split – organized a protest, because the management of the Broadway cinema didn’t pay them their full salaries for April, May and the June. Ten people have gathered in the front of the cinema’s entrance with the banner “Bojkot kina” (eng. The boycott of the cinema). They also had leaflets that advocated the people to boycott the cinema, because of humiliating and exploiting workers. After 20 minutes, the security has shown up, and the students moved away so that they don’t have trouble with security. This was only the first protest of warning to management of the cinema.

Mateo, the member of MASA’s local group from Split, said: “The management hasn’t reacted the way we wanted, so the actions will repeat soon”.

The Network of Anarcho-Syndicalists (MASA) has connected itself with Split’s students after their first statement for the media. MASA also made an interview with 3 workers from Zagreb, who have also been treated same way (just a few years ago!).

MASA sent an email to the management of the Broadway cinema on Wednesday, 22^nd of July demanding them to pay full salaries to students/workers (in Zagreb, the workers are included) within the next 3 days. Their reply to our e-mail was:

Dear,

We suggest You before yours “unsparing propaganda campaign” to check the statements of your clients. You haven’t asked us nothing, of course, and you are just threatening us, but the Students’ service has all the data about our “debts” to students, so check that out.

(Explanation: Students’ service is an institution where students must take out their contracts if they want to work. Students’ service also stands as the mediator between the bosses and the students/workers and students get their paychecks from them.)

We are sure that the purpose of your existence is not only to “revolt” and make noise, but it’s to protect the rights of socially threatened population, but, also, you can be punished for spreading the untruths and making damage to the reputation of business subjects.

Issa

Audiovizualna zabava d.o.o.

(Siniša Vidović)

Since the only answer of the management should have been, but isn’t paying full salaries to the workers/students, this kind of answer is just an attempt of retraction, and hiding the real problem. Also, this is an attempt of shifting responsibility from one institution to another institution. As far as we know – Students’ service has made a law suit against Broadway cinema, because they claim that Broadway cinema is their “biggest defaulter”.

We would like to remind people that this is not the first case of such treatment of the workers and students in Broadway cinema. In August of 2008^th MASA fought against the same cinema because they didn’t pay our member and his fellow workers. We won this battle and all of them got their deserved salaries.

We from the MASA are very happy that our comrades from FAU have helped us in this action with their e-mail to the management. FAU also has similar problems in Germany, since they are running the campaign against the Babylon cinema. Good luck comrades in your fight!

International Secretary of MASA
sec.international[at]masa-hr.org