Mahiliou: workers of bread-baking plant demand higher wages
Workers of Mahiliou bread-baking
plant #4 demand an increase of wages. "We
managed to collect only 22 signatures under our petition to the director with
the requirement to raise workers' wages, when the administration of the plant
found about it and started phoning to all signers, threatening with retaliation,”
says a worker of the plant. Some of the workers revoked their signatures as a
result of such pressurization.
The worker said that under the pressure of the administration of some of the
bread factory workers have already abandoned their signatures. An average wage
at the enterprise is 1.1 – 1.5 million rubles (about $ 135-185), whereas the
declared wage is 1,9 million rubles.
Human rights defender Barys Bukhel attentively watches the situation at the
enterprise.
“We give consultations to workers of the plant and are ready to defend their
rights if necessary. Nobody has been dismissed so far, and the petition hasn’t
been passed to the plant administration, that’s why it’s difficult to predict
the development of the events. By the way, the productivity of the plant
increased 15 times as a result of modernization, but it had no impact on the
workers’ wages,” says Mr. Bukhel.