France Tomšič (trade unionist)

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France Tomšič (born August 2, 1937 in Šmarca ; † March 25, 2010 in Kamnik ) was a Slovenian mechanical engineer , union leader and politician . As the organizer of the first strike in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the founder of the first social democratic party there and the first independent trade union, he became well known in Slovenia.

Life

France Tomšič was born in 1937 as the fourth of six children to a small farmer family in Šmarca near Kamnik (then Yugoslavia ). After attending elementary school in his hometown, he went to the lower grammar school in Kamnik and then to the industrial school in Kranj and finally to the technical middle school in Ljubljana , where he obtained the higher education entrance qualification. At the University of Ljubljana he studied mechanical engineering and made herein 1963 his diploma . He then worked - interrupted by military service in the Yugoslav People's Army in 1964/65 - at the Jurij Vega Institute in Ljubljana.

In 1966 France Tomšič moved to Bochum and in 1967 to Paderborn in the Federal Republic of Germany , in 1969 to West Berlin , where he worked, among other things, in the development department at Askania and later at Siemens . He married in Bochum. From this marriage, which later divorced in Yugoslavia, three children were born in Germany.

In 1976 he returned to Yugoslavia and was employed as a project manager at Litostroj in Ljubljana. Here he initially worked in the Slovenian trade union federation (Zveza sindikatov Slovenije) , but the dissatisfaction with falling real wages in the mid-1980s finally brought him into opposition to the same. From December 9-15, 1987, he led a strike by the 5,000 workers in Litostroj, as a result of which a resolution was passed to found an independent trade union and an initiative to found a social democratic party was formed. With the establishment of the Social Democratic Federation of Slovenia (Socialdemokratska zveza Slovenije) , the forerunner of today's Slovenian Democratic Party , in 1989 he briefly became its first chairman. From 1990 to 1997 he was chairman of the independent trade union confederation Neodvisnost - Konfederacija novih sindikatov Slovenije .

In 1992 he ran unsuccessfully in the presidential elections in Slovenia , where he won only 0.6%.

In old age he married again and had a fourth child with his second wife in Kamnik.

literature

  • Enciklopedija Slovenije (1999), volume 13, entry France Tomšič. Ljubljana, Mladinska knjiga.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Tomšič, France
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Slovenian mechanical engineer, union leader and politician
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Šmarca
DATE OF DEATH March 25, 2010
Place of death Kamnik