Fate of workers of Kruhlaye Flax Factory remains unclear

Workers of the open corporation "Kruhlaye Flax Factory" continue struggling against the shutdown of the enterprise.

The local authorities intend to close the factory this months and propose the workers to go to work to the flax factory in the neighboring Shklou district.

Civil activist Zinaida Mileshchanka, a former member of the Kruhlaye Town Council, where the bulk of the workers live, helps them to defend their rights.

"It is not the first enterprise to be closed down, reduced or amalgamated in Kruhlaye", says Zinaida Mileshchanka. "Now the turn has come to the oldest enterprise of the district, the Kruhlaye Flax Factory. The majority of workers are of pre-pension age and it is difficult for them to find any job. The only thing they were proposed by the authorities is going to work 40 kilometers away, to the flax factory in the Shklou district. Meanwhile, even this job is temporary, nobody promises to conclude any labor agreements with the Shklou Flax Factory or pay for the travel expenditures."

According to Zinaida Mileshchanka, workers of the Kruhlaye Flax Factory think that all promises of the authorities are just trickery used by the authorities to evade from issuing the workers with financial aid due to the liquidation of the working places.

"The people believe that everything is done not to pay them a penny for the liquidation for their working places. Everything seems quite simple: if the factory is liquidated, the people could be dismissed in conformity with the legislation: with preliminary notification, payment of the financial aid guaranteed by the law and the subsequent registration at the labor registry office. However, instead of it the district authorities insult the workers and the administration of the factory as if they have just broken loose," says the activist.

"The factory workers filed an application to the Kruhlaye District Prosecutor's Office and a collective address to the Mahiliou Regional Executive Committee. At present they are collecting signatures under a letter to the head of the state, Aliaksandr Lukashenka and a collective address to the Horki Inter-district Labor Inspection, to which they decided to apply on advice of human rights defenders. Some of the workers are thinking about establishing a unit of the Independent Trade Union of Radio Electronic Industry at the factory, as far as the official trade unions in no way help the people to defend their rights, being ready to implement any orders of the power vertical," points Zinaida Mileshchanka.

The staff of the Kruhlaye Flax Factory counts about 80 people, most of whom worked at it more than 15 years.

During the recent years, a number of organizations and enterprises were closed down in Kruhlaye – a butter factory, a bread factory, the district consumer society, an agricultural chemical plant, the Rakushytsy poultry factory, a brickyard, the Kruhliany boarding school. A number of collective farms were reorganized.

The only enterprise which continues working stably is the local building trust #266.