A Serbian union official has been explaining why he chopped off his finger and ate it in a protest over unpaid wages.

Zoran Bulatovic said he staged the grisly stunt to highlight the desperation of himself and colleagues, some of whom who have not been paid earnings dating back several years.

He said: "We, the workers have nothing to eat. We had to seek some sort of alternative food and I gave them an example. It hurt like hell."

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

He decided to act after his deputy, "a single mother of three, was the first to say she would cut off her finger".

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

State-owned Raska Holding was a major textile producer in the late 1980s with a workforce of 4,000.

It suffered during the collapse of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s and a loss of markets and mismanagement during a decade of wars and sanctions led to massive job cuts, leaving the company with only 100 workers.

Some employees have not been paid for years, only collecting social benefits such as free medical care.

About two dozen workers went on a 19-day hunger strike last year.

Bulatovic said his comrades will not back down from their demands, but they will postpone planned self-mutilations at least until talks with government officials in Belgrade scheduled for tomorrow.