Baltic Pearl Migrant Construction Workers Demand 780,000 Rubles from Employer
July 20, 2015
Rosbalt

PETERSBURG, JULY 20. Workers building the Baltic Pearl residential complex have demanded back pay from their employer, Trivium Group. As one of the construction workers, foreman Khusrav Kholmirzayev, told Rosbalt, the employees calculated the company has owned thirty workers approximately 780,000 rubles [approx. 12,600 euros] since last year.

According to Kholmirzayev, last year, three crews were employed on the building site, and he supervised thirty men. He added that they worked without having signed labor contracts. Meanwhile, Russian authorities deported several migrants: the workers did not have enough money to pay for work licenses. Kholmirzayev noted that his crew was not paid fully from August to October 2014.

“We had only enough to survive. We stayed because we were promised the remainder would be paid,” he said.

In 2015, the workers were not paid for March and April, after which they walked off the construction site. The workers who remained in Petersburg got jobs at other building sites, while Kholmirzayev has been trying to get the money from the previous employer.

“Relatives of the workers call me and say, ‘As foreman, you have to pay the workers.’ My parents have paid many of them,” he noted.

Today, the Trivium Group’s offices at Burtsev Street, 13, were supposed to be picketed by twelve migrant workers, but the protest did not take place. Only Kholmirzayev and Maksim Kulaev, an activist with the Interregional Trade Union Workers Association (ITUWA), showed up for the event. Moreover, the company could not be found at its registered address.

According to Kulaev, because of the crisis, “wage arrears are widespread in the housing sector and construction, especially if migrant workers are involved.”

Rosbalt tried and failed, over the course of the day, to make contact with Trivium Group management over the phone via its listed numbers.

The website of the Petersburg and Leningrad Region Arbritration Court currently lists nine suits which Trivium Group has lost. According to the files viewable on the website, it transpires that Trivium Group has been ordered to play over fifty million rubles [approx. 808,000 euros] to other organizations. The claims have been appealed.

Trivium Group is one of the many companies engaged in erecting the Baltic Pearl complex.

This is the third in a series of posts dealing with Central Asia, Central Asians, immigration, and migrant workers in Russia. The first post in the series, a translation of Sergei Abashin’s essay “Movements and Migrants,” can be read here. The second post, “Why Migrant Children Are Being Expelled from Russian Schools,” can be read here. Translated by the Russian Reader