Day: November 17, 2016

How to Get Fired from Your Job in Russia

Historian Alexei Petrov. Photo courtesy of Radio Svoboda
Historian Alexey Petrov. Photo courtesy of Radio Svoboda

Historian Alexey Petrov Fired from Irkutsk State University
Radio Svoboda
November 16, 2016

Alexey Petrov, deputy dean of the history department at Irkutsk State University has been fired from his job, allegedly for engaging in public activism to the detriment of his work as an educator. As Petrov reported on Facebook on Wednesday, his work book* was brought directly to his workplace.

Petrov heads the regional branch of Golos, a grassroots organization that combats electoral fruade. He is also renowned as organizer of the project Walks through Old Irkutsk.

The dismissal has come in the wake of an inspection of the university by the prosecutor’s office, which was instigated by the so-called Trade Union of Independent Citizens, our correspondent reports. Two complaints were sent to the prosecutor’s office. The first complaint, which was anonymous, states that Petrov, deputy dean of the ISU history department, publicly presents and promotes insufficiently patriotric views during his lectures. The second letter, signed by Sergei Poznikov, focuses on the historian’s absences from the deans’ offices at the university during working hours and his frequent trips overseas.

The complaints against the “excessively liberal-minded historian” were made to the prosecutor’s officer after the Russian Congress of University Vice Chancellors for Morale and Discipline, in October, at which a program for assessing the “protest potential” of students and professors was presented.

* “Every person working for an employer in Russia is issued a work book by the person’s original employer. A work book contains the record of a person’s employment history, dates of employment, as well as other information. Employers have the duty to keep and timely update an employee’s work book while the employee is working for the employer. On the employee’s final day of employment with an employer, the employer must complete and return the employee’s work book, against the employee’s signature.” Source: Multitran

Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade AT for the heads-up

Ford: Don’t Cut Workers at the Vsevolozhsk Plant!

“Ford! Stop Laying People Off! http://www.mpra.su.” Photo courtesy of MPRA

Ford! Stop Laying People Off!
MPRA
November 15, 2016

The Ford plant in Vsevolozhsk is going to cut 130 employees. The workers are becoming more and more dissatisfied. Attempts to sweeten the pill have only added fuel to the fire. MPRA (Interregional Trade Union Workers Association) activists at the plant have related a telltale story. Recently, management decided to reward the best workers with movie tickets, including workers who had received layoff notices. One such worker threw the tickets in a manager’s face, saying he needed a job, not a handout. After this incident, they say, Ford’s director general Maslyakov has banned giving perks to workers about to be downsized because, allegedly, it appears “unethical.” MPRA would argue that it is the layoffs, whose soundness is quite dubious, that appear unethical.

“We are told the layoffs are unavoidable,” reads a trade union leaflet, “but who has verified and proven it? Shouldn’t management first save money by cutting the wages and bonuses of managers?”

Today, trade union activists came to the front gates of the auto plant to hold solo pickets and talk with workers. Some of them said straight out they have nothing to lose. The layoffs are a challenge to everyone, not only to those slated to be fired, for everyone could find themselves in their shoes. MPRA urges people to join the union and support the protest campaign. We have no doubt the decision to cut jobs can be reconsidered if the majority of employees join the fight to save those jobs. MPRA’s experience at Omsktransmash and the Volkswagen plant in Kaluga, where collective action and negotations helped avoid massive layoffs, testifies to this fact.

We call upon fraternal trade unions and all people for whom social justice is not an empty phrase to support Ford workers personally by sending us photos containing messages of solidarity and the demand that Ford rescind its order to cut employees.

MPRA St. Petersburg

Translated by the Russian Reader. You can read my previous posts about the Interregional Trade Union Workers Association (MPRA), other independent Russian trade unions, and the brave campaigns waged by other Russian workers here and here.