Moscow, October 27 – Commission on Labour Disputes of the State Duma of the Russian Federation considered a conflict situation between McDonald’s administration and a trade union at the food processing plant McComplex. Since 1998 the union at McComplex stands upon workers’ rights to organize and to sign a collective bargaining agreement but McDonald’s administration was resistant and aggressively busted the union and its supporters.

Before the meeting about hundred activists of the Moscow City Committee of the IUF-affiliated Commerce and Catering Workers’ Union held a picket in front of the State Duma to protest McDonald’s anti-union policy and to support McComplex local union branch.

Though being invited to the Commission meeting McDonald’s executives considered their participation as “inexpedient” but sent a statement in written form to the Commission chairman, Andrey Issaev. In this document Khamzat Khasbulatov, “Moscow-McDonald’s” General Director, officially recognized that the union is authorized to carry on collective bargaining on behalf of its members. McDonald’s still refuses the union’s intention to sign the agreement for all workers and alleges a work collective conference where staff delegates voted against it.

This is a big progress since McDonald’s challenged the union legitimacy itself just two weeks ago.

The Commission has examined the conflict situation basing on McDonald’s statement, witnesses of unionists, labour lawyers expertise, Moscow executive authorities opinion, ILO position and other sources. Finally the Commission has drafted a decision composed of several points, including:

• to recommend McDonald’s administration to inform staff that it is inadmissible to use work collective conferences for limitation of workers’ rights to organize and to collective bargaining,
• to recommend the employer to enter the collective bargaining process within a week;
• to request the Labour Inspection of the Russian Federation to audit all McDonald’s units in Russia for the purpose to check its correspondence to the Russian and international labour standards; the audit results will be sent to a number of official bodies, including the State Duma, the Presidential Administration, the Government, the General Public Prosecutor Office, etc.
• to prepare amendments to the Russian legislation in order to increase employers liability for avoidance of collective bargaining; etc.

The final text of the Commission’s decision is to be adopted and published next week and the deadline for McDonald’s administration to start the collective bargaining process is scheduled in a week after that.

Links: McDonald's Workers Tell Duma Their Stories  By Yevgenia Borisova the Moscow Times  

Photo-report of the action against McDonald's anti-union policy