Day: January 26, 2017

Biysk Plywood Workers Strike Successfully for Back Pay

The Match Flares Up
MPRA
January 26, 2017

Petroneft-Biysk LLC has nothing to do with so-called black gold. As the company’s website reports, it is the legal successor to the Biysk Plywood and Match Mill, known to Biysk residents as the Match. The Match mainly produces plywood. On January 12, around 200 workers in the plywood facility went on strike, demanding payment of wage arrears dating back to September 2016. Around 300 people are employed at the plant.

rabotniki-zavodaFactory workers. Photo courtesy of amic.ru

According to local media, back wages were the cause of the conflict, but the workers themselves talked about an under-the-table bonus. According to them, since new management took over the plant, it has paid a third of their wages off the books. In the autumn, the company stopped paying wages altogether.

Wage delays are not news at Petroneft. As early as January 2016, management had tried to persuade staff to be patient while the company got back on its feet.

“We appealed to people: if you care about the company’s plight and you can make the decision for yourself, we ask you to go on an unpaid leave of absence. We didn’t force anyone to do it. We asked them to understand and accept the situation,” Olga Fischer, the company’s chief economist, said in an interview published in Nash Biysk in January 2016.

A year passed, and the workers’ patience finally snapped.

“The whole plywood facility went on strike. We notified the employer and got everyone in the shop to sign a petition naming the cause of the strike. We got copies of the strike notice back from management, with a stamp and number indicating they had received it. On Thursday, we didn’t go to work. There was no pressure. The foreman relayed our conditions to management, and ultimately they put us on technical downtime,” a striker told MPRA Omsk activists.

However, the workers did not have to sit at home for long. On January 17, the employer paid six months of back wages to workers from the striking shop floors. Support staff, who did not strike, were not paid the wages owed them, however.

“Afterwards, that bonus was issued, but it was issued only to those workers who had been on strike. Now they’re looking for the instigators, but we won’t give them up. The minutes of the trade union organizing meeting we had do exist, but unfortunately it won’t go any farther than that,” said our source in the mill.

MPRA congratulates the workers on their first victory. However, their success will not endure if they do not secure it by forming a trade union. We hope the folks in Biysk will be able to take this second, decisive step towards fairness. Then the Match will kindle the flame.

Based on reporting from MPRA Omsk

Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks again to Comrade Ivan Ovsyannikov for the heads-up. MPRA is the Interregional Trade Union Workers Association. MPRA is affiliated with the IndustriALL Global Union.

Russian Government Refuses to Allocate 70 Billion Rubles to Combat HIV

Government Refuses to Allocate 70 Billion Rubles to Combat HIV
Polina Zvezdina
RBC
January 26, 2017

The Health Ministry has sent the government a plan for implementing the national strategy for preventing the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) until 2020. RBC has a copy of the document, whose authenticity has been confirmed by a source close to the government, in its possession. The plan does not stipulate allocating additional funds for combating the infection. In the financial feasibility study appended to the draft plan, officials noted the agencies responsible for its implementation, as well as the regions, would have to finance the plan’s implementation.

Additional financing of the plan was stipulated in a earlier draft, also examined by RBC. In the draft, the Health Ministry had indicated additional monies from the budget, 17.5 billion rubles per annum, would be required to meet the strategy’s targets. There were plans to spend 13.2 billion rubles of this money on treatment, 3.2 billion rubles on diagnosis, and 1.1 billion rubles on treatment oversight. This funding should have made it possible for all HIV patients currently registered at AIDS centers to undergo special treatment and increase to 35% the share of the population tested annually for HIV. In 2015, 19.3% of the population was tested for HIV, while 37.3% of infected patients were provided with medical treatment.

It was the Finance Ministry that did not approve allocating the 70 billion rubles, judging by a ministry review sent to the Health Ministry on December 22, 2016. First Deputy Finance Minister Tatyana Nesterenko did not support the additional allocation, because these funds were not included in the approved federal budget for 2017–2019. In the review, the Finance Ministry argued that budgetary allocations for new spending could be contemplated only at the beginning of the fiscal year and provided that the government had additional revenues.

The government will continue its discussion of the draft plan for HIV prevention, said Denis Godlevsky, an expert at the HIV Assistance Foundation. There is a chance the Health Ministry will succeed in obtaining the full funding, he said.

"Percentages of HIV infected people in Russia. The percentage of people infected nationwide is 0.72%." In the original article, this map is interactive by region.
Percentages of HIV infected people in Russia by region. The percentage of people under the age of 60 infected nationwide is 0.72%. In the original article (go to the link at the top of the page), this map is interactive by region. The figures for Crimea and Sebastopol reflect the percentage of infected residents among all age groups. Infographic courtesy of RBC

Testing 35% of the population annually for HIV and providing 100% treatment for all registered patients were goals the Health Ministry hoped to achieve only if it received the “requisite” financing, as outlined in the HIV prevention strategy adopted by the government. If this money is not provided, the ministry proposes focusing on a different set of figures. Under the current healthcare budget, the number of people undergoing testing would increase to only 24%, while 56% of infected patients would receive treatment.

The Health Ministry has not responded to RBC’s questions as to which set of targets the ministry would follow when implementing the strategy.

If government agencies would use the funds already available effectively and rationally, the situation would begin to change for the better anyway, said Alexei Lakhov, deputy director for public relations at E.V.A., a noncommercial partnership.

“And when the situation changes for the better, a financial feasibility study can be done requesting additional appropriations,” Lakhov suggested.

The HIV prevention strategy was approved on October 20, 2016. It contained no information about funding.

Translated by the Russian Reader