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Paper short abstract:

The presentation will analyse several aspects and overall importance of the workers strike at the Uljanik shipyard in Pula (Croatia) during late August 2018. This strike was the last organized attempt to preserve industrial production on the Pula slipways.

Paper long abstract:

The presentation will analyse several aspects and overall importance of the workers strike at the Uljanik shipyard in Pula (Croatia) during late August 2018. This strike was the last one to take place in city’s urban tissue and last organized attempt to preserve industrial production on the Pula slipways, as rather soon this 163 years old shipyard went into definitive bankruptcy and complete closure. Although shipyard had serious financial issues during its last decade, massive strike that lasted for ten days and took place outside the shipyard’s spatial limits, also involved many Pula’s residents and associations. In a region where tourism with its idiosyncrasies, e.g. deregulation of working hours, workers contracts and rights or blurring of work and leisure - is promoted as dominant industry, this strike was also understood as a resistance to such “inevitabilities”. Although strike had huge national and local media coverage, I will primarily touch upon creation of content that was community-oriented: Radio Rojc turned out to be an irreplaceable station in that process. Through a series of recordings from the field during the strike, radio shows, interviews, but also radio drama, that community radio became a place of advocating preservation of production in a specific language that was mostly avoided in other media.