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Attacks on the Belarusian
Trade Unions continue
Trade Unionists have been facing heavy
interference from management and government in the run up to
the Congress of the Radio &Electronic Workers’ Union
that took place at the 20th of September.
Strong pressure to leave the branch
union.has been successfully exerted on the trade union
committee of the production amalgamation “Integral”. The
amalgamation has 15.000 employees in several enterprises. That
is approximately 20% of the membership of the branch union.
The chairman of the Radio & Electronic Workers’ Union,
Mr. Feydenich was denied access to the Integral factory to
participate in the trade union meeting, when the trade union
committee of the amalgamation voted to leave the union. The
trade union committee of the enterprise “Zwetotron” that
is part of Integral voted to stay in the branch union. The
Chairwomen of the enterprise reported at the conference how
the management put pressure on her to leave the union. When
she refused to support the requested decision, management
organized in absence of the elected chairperson of the trade
union committee trade union meetings and made the members vote
to leave the union. A delegate from that was threatened by
management to be fired if he would attend the trade union
congress.
The minister of industry Mr. Harlap had
joined the branch union a couple of month ago and got himself
elected as a delegate. He and some directors, who had also
been elected as delegates, criticized that the trade union had
send a complaint to the ILO. The Minister argued that there
was no need for such a complaint and that the members had not
been sufficiently informed about it. Therefor he requested
that – despite the fact that the text of the complaint had
been published by the trade unions earlier - the complaint was
read to the audience. After reading the full text of the
complaint to the delegates the conference voted - despite the
presence of the Minister and several directors - in an open
vote 100 to 25 to support the complaint. The vote was a clear
statement by the delegates that they are behind the leadership
and that they are not prepared to accept blatant violations of
workers’ rights.
There was no alternative candidate running
against Feydenich as a chairman and he was elected with nearly
90 of the votes. After failing to replace disliked trade union
leaders through interference in the election process there
seems to be a change in tactics. Instead of replacing the
leadership there might be further attempts to break up the
branch unions by creating company trade unions.
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