Russian Factory Workers End Hunger Strike After Receiving Wage Repayment Pledge
Posted on: Thursday, 8 May 2008, 12:00 CDT
Text of report by Russian state news agency ITAR-TASS
Yekaterinburg, 8 May: Workers from the Lobvinskiy biochemical plant in Sverdlovsk Region today called off their hunger strike in response to a management promise to clear wage arrears. The plant's management presented letters of guarantee undertaking to clear all wage arrears to the hunger strikers by 10 June 2008, the chairperson of Roskhimprofsoyuz [Russian chemical industry trade union], Irina Kuropatkina, told an ITAR-TASS correspondent.
"The rest of the plant workers will have their arrears repaid under a schedule linked to output sales," she said, adding that a special commission was monitoring all funds paid into the enterprise's accounts.
The plant houses two enterprises with different forms of ownership. The total number of employees is about 550. As at 18 April, pay arrears stood at more than R19m.
Nineteen workers of the Lobvinskiy biochemical plant went on strike on 23 April to demand the payment of wage arrears. On 28 April they started an indefinite hunger strike. One of the women on hunger strike was today admitted to a local hospital with a diagnosis of hypertensive crisis. She was given medical assistance and her condition is improving, Kuropatkina said.
The strike at the Lobvinskiy biochemical plant was a third such action at Sverdlovsk Region enterprises in the space of a month. Between 26 March and 4 April, 107 miners were on strike at the Sevuralboksitruda enterprise's Krasnaya Shapochka mine, demanding a pay rise. Between 13 and 19 April, 66 miners from the same mine were on hunger strike demanding the holding of a general meeting of the workforce and the approval at this meeting of their pay claims. All protests have now been called off.
Originally published by ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow, in Russian 1134 8 May 08.
(c) 2008 BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
Source: BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union
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