Independent Trade Unions Face New Forms of Pressurization

According to RFE/RL

In the beginning of September the International Labor Organization planned to send to Minsk a special commission of inquiry. However, the visit of specialists from Brussels is delayed.

Mikalai Kannakh, vice-chair of the Congress of Democratic Trade Unions, informed RFE/RL that the reason for the delay is the request of Belarusian authorities, who stated they weren’t ready to work with experts according to the schedule that has been proposed by ILO this spring. The organization gave the authorities 14 months to correct the found violations in implementation of the working law and the rules for the activity of independent trade unions. Now the time has come to check the results.

According to the leader of the Independent Trade Union Hienadz Bykau, during this induced pause in the international control the conditions for the activity of independent trade unions in Belarus are likely to get worse. Belarusian Congress of Independent Trade Unions decided to hold it VIth assembly and asked Minsk car factory to lend its hall. The factory administration agreed to lend the hall on 12 November. However, two weeks later it broke the agreement.

Mikalai Kannakh, vice-chair of the Congress of Democratic

These days Minsk Economic Court has deprived the Independent Trade Union of the juridical address. The let-pass to the territory of Minsk plant of automatic lines was confiscated from Hienadz Bykau. He calls it a new form of pressurization and says the situation reminds of the treatment of the Union of Poles.