Official propaganda stirs up hostility to independent trade unions

The administration of the Babruisk Tractor Parts Plant (BTPP) accused the leader of the enterprise’s Free trade union of a desire to deprive people of their right to work.

An appeal of the enterprise’s administration and the official trade union committee to the workers was published on the company’s web-site. It says that Mikhail Kavalkou “is teaching the enterprise’s administration on the engaged Internet sites about how it should trade on the goods it produces and how to work in order to keep the personnel at the plant”. Also the independent trade union’s leader is proclaimed guilty of “his address to the foreign trade partners calling to introduce sanctions against the enterprise”, BelaPAN reports.

The administration and the official trade union of the enterprise believe that “because of the destructive activities of the primary trade union organization headed by Kavalkou”, “in the past two months the number of the trade union members decreased twice, from 260 to 130 people”.

“Everything that is stated in that lampoon is pure slander. From the beginning to the end”, - Kavalkou stated, pointing out that usually such things happen after the issue of their trade union information bulletin. “In the last issue we revealed the nature of our ideologist Uladzimir Eliseyenka. We accused him of not cherishing the personnel as he is supposed to. On the contrary, he wastes them and works like a temp. Now we have the response”, Kavalkou believes.

According to him, “they totally lie through their teeth when they say that the worker of the plant leave the independent trade union voluntarily – there is a massive pressure on people in order to force them to leave the union”.