A Serbian union official has chopped off his finger and eaten it in a protest over wages to show how desperate he and other workers are. Skip related content

"We, the workers have nothing to eat, we had to seek some sort of alternative food and I gave them an example," Zoran Bulatovic said.

"It hurt like hell," he added.

Mr Bulatovic, a union leader at the Raska Holding textile factory in Novi Pazar, southwest Serbia, used a hacksaw to cut off most of his left-hand little finger.

Mr Bulatovic decided to act after his deputy, a single mother of three, said she would chop off her finger.

"I could not allow her to do that," he explained.

State-owned Raska Holding was a major textile producer in the late 80s with a workforce of 4,000.

But it suffered during the collapse of the former Yugoslavia in the 90s.

A loss of markets and mismanagement during a decade of wars and sanctions led to massive job cuts, leaving the company with just 100 workers.