- Title: RUSSIA: Workers in Zlatoust start hunger strike over wage cuts
- Date: 15th March 2009
- Summary: YEVGENY SALOMATOV, ZLATOUST PROSECUTOR, IN HIS OFFICE COMPUTER MONITORS (SOUNDBITE) (Russian) YEVGENY SALOMATOV, ZLATOUST PROSECUTOR, SAYING "Now we have a schedule of paying back the money owed, the sum 37 million roubles, the payments should be completed within half a year. And the workers from the mill, who are on hunger strike, disagree with this plan and want all th
- Embargoed: 30th March 2009 13:00
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- Topics: Employment,Domestic Politics
- Reuters ID: LVA2EI9K5VZAXV1AFC19L0UHTDW8
- Story Text: Sixteen Russian steelworkers in the town of Zlatoust in the Russian Ural mountains have begun a hunger strike in protest against wage cuts, mounting a rare show of dissent in a country where unemployment rates have soared to their highest in a decade.
Zlatoust, a town of nearly 200,000 people, was founded in 1754 with the construction of the ironworks. In Soviet times it became a large industrial centre with a steel mill as its largest and central enterprise.
Workers at the Zlatoust steel mill, owned by private steel group ESTAR, started a hunger strike on March 9, angry at the administration for reducing their salaries. A few months ago the average worker's salary at the steel mill was 18,000 roubles (520 U.S. dollars at the present exchange rate). Today workers get about 5000 roubles (144 USD). The workers on strike say that such wage cuts are in contradiction with labour law, which allows the employer to cut the salary no more than by one third.
"No, he (steel mill's director) doesn't promise us anything, he doesn't even meet us. He drives by here when we go out for a smoke and smiles at us. He is probably waiting for us to die or maybe he thinks that we will resume work. I cannot speak on behalf of everyone, but I can speak for myself, I agree to work, but I won't stop the hunger strike, it's better to crash and die, maybe they (the mill's administration) will give us what they owe us for our funeral," said Alexander Negrebetskikh, in a trade union office on the premises of the Zlatoust plant, where workers on hunger strike spend their off work hours.
Alexander's brother, Pavel Negrebetskikh, leaves the trade union office briefly to feed his dog and cat in the small wooden house which he bought a year ago with a bank loan. The monthly mortgage payment is equal to his monthly salary now.
"I am hungry and my family is hungry, and it hurts to feel that the authorities don't give a damn about us, nobody does anything," says Pavel, whose wife and their new-born son has moved in with her parents, who still have jobs and can support them.
Management at the plant, which employs more than 9,000 people and produces steel alloys used in spacecraft and submarines, called the strike illegal and referred the case to the local prosecutor.
In a statement on its website, www.zmk.ru, the plant said: "The activities of those participating in the action are, in our opinion, provocative, of an extreme nature and are aimed at de-stabilising the situation not only at the enterprise, but in the town itself."
Zlatoust prosecutor, Yevgeny Salomatov, said that the prosecutor's office has ruled that the steel mill's administration has to compensate the workers the money they didn't receive.
"Now we have a schedule of paying back the money owed, the sum 37 million roubles, the payments should be completed within half a year. And the workers from the mill, who are on hunger strike, disagree with this plan and want all the money to be paid immediately to all the employees," said Salomatov.
The plant's executive director Sergei Khomyanin, interviewed on local television, said that the mill's administration will compensate the workers for wage cuts in 2008. But didn't specify what the administration will do about wages for the first months of 2009.
"I have repeatedly announced that we will repay the money within six months, we do not refuse paying, our credo is the law and we always act within the framework of the law," he added.
Companies in Russia, facing its first recession in a decade after years of growth fuelled by high oil and commodity prices, have been laying off staff, cutting wages and reducing the working week since the financial crisis hit.
About 800,000 Russians lost their jobs in December and January, taking the total number of unemployed to more than 6 million, or 8.1 percent of the working population.
Steelmakers have been particularly affected as construction projects have ground to a halt and consumers are buying fewer new cars. Severstal, the country's largest steel producer, said on Wednesday it planned to cut up to 9,500 jobs in Russia.
Russia's average monthly salary in January, the latest month for which data is available, was 15,200 roubles (440 USD). - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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