No Room for Free Trade Union

According to www.praca.by

The administration of Belnaftamkhim (Belarusian Oil Chemistry) Concern refused to provide any office room to the primary unit of the Free Trade Union of Belarus that was established by the workers of the open company Polatsk Shklovalakno (Polatsk Fiberglass). According to the present legislation in the case an organization has no office at which its legal address is registered it can’t be registered (if it had no registration before) and in the case it is registered it automatically loses the registration.

The chair of the primary unit Viktar Stukau was informed about it by the chair of the legal department of the factory Vasil Zatsirakhin. When Mr Stukau asked about the reasons, the lawyer answered he couldn’t discuss it and promised that everything would be written in an official letter that would be presented to the trade union later. The chairman of the Supervisory Soviet of the enterprise Aliaksandr Korshykau also evaded from answering this question.

‘There’s no secret’, Mr Stukau explains. ‘They simply have no legal reasons for refusal and no one wants to take the responsibility. That’s why they protract the time in order to prepare an answer with some legal grounding’. Viktar Stukau also said that recently the activists of the trade union decided not to take part in the political life of the region and deal with solely trade union issues.

‘Every member of trade union has the right to participate in elections and political actions of the opposition, but we can’t engage the trade union in it, because it will only lose its popularity as a result’, he said. ‘Trade union is not a paper – it is action first of all. That’s why our members know that in the case they need help they can always find it at FTD. We can organize collection of signatures, write to a newspaper or invent other actions that will make the employer to respect the workers’ rights. This is our strength,’ stated Viktar Stukau.