WORLD WORLDWIDE RUSSIA News Journal Update - (en) Russia AIT: Kharkov anarchists joined the international M.A.T. week. (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 

For the fourth autumn in a row, the Assembly joins the Week against
Non-Payment of Wages, which is organized in October by the International
Workers' Association (IWA-AIT). This time our story is not about
Kharkov, but about those who got into trouble from one brown substance
to another, barely making ends meet under any government. ---- We are
talking about utility workers in the city of Rubezhnoye, which until
full-scale was the center of the chemical and pulp and paper industry of
Ukraine, in the spring of 2022 was turned into ruins and captured by the
Russian Federation, and since last fall has been separated by the front
line from the Izyum district of the Kharkov region and adjacent part of
Donetsk.

If before the war, workers of Kharkovvodokanal protested because of
arrears on their already pitiful salaries, then last month this probably
happened in Rubezhnoye. Information about what is happening there has to
be collected and verified literally bit by bit - entry into the city
until December 31st with passes or if you have registration in it, there
is no connection or internet, apparently, so that the people of this
"people's republic" complain less. So, the press service of the
Ukrainian regional administration of the Lugansk region writes on
September 24:

"At Rubizhny, water utility workers voiced a protest against the
occupying power, feeling like they were giving up their obligations,
since they were working without pay. The assigned food did not ruin the
time of the pseudo-referendum in 2022, and now - after the completion of
the so-called "first elections". The waiters didn't bother. The
situation that has developed is of concern to the "republic", including
utility workers and their families."

On the other hand, a post about this appeared in the local Z-public on
the same day:

"Hello! My parents live in the city of Rubezhnoye, Lugansk Republic.
They are retired, but they still have to work, since everything is
expensive, they have been working since June of this year in the housing
and communal services in the 7th microdistrict, they have never seen a
salary, they keep promising and promising. I wish someone would respond
to this post and check why this is happening. Who is responsible for
this? They promised that they would pay. Thank you!"

Judging by the comments to the post, one can only hope for direct
action, although petitions to officials are fraught with "finding
ammunition." One of the respondents even proposed the most important
anarcho-syndicalist method - a general strike! The striking
metallurgists of Alchevsk threatened the authorities of the "LPR" with
the same step in 2021

At the same time, nothing was reported about interruptions in the water
supply of Rubezhnoye. "There are no changes, nothing is being repaired,
they are only doing partial pothole repairs to the road, mainly in the
center. There are a lot of grocery stores, there are even a few stores
with clothes and shoes, I don't know the prices. The connection
sometimes makes its way, but it is very difficult to catch it. Also, the
city is quite noisy; departures can be heard very loudly in the
distance. As far as communications are concerned, everything is stable -
electricity, gas, water - everything is there. It is believed that the
city currently has about 14-15 thousand inhabitants (according to
humanitarian aid lists and people's observations)," someone said on the
city's social networks on October 6. It turns out that there was no
strike at all?

According to pre-war experience, spontaneous unrest against wage arrears
usually looks like this: those who come to replace them, instead of
starting work, express dissatisfaction, they are promised to pay them
everything, after which the work of the enterprise continues and they
give them part of the promised amount. Most likely, this was the case in
Rubezhnoye. "They wrote that they paid out salaries to all utility
workers for six months," a foreigner named Sergei summed up today in a
conversation with the author of these lines.

But on September 2, neighboring Lisichansk, where City Day and the 80th
anniversary of liberation from the Nazi invaders were then celebrated,
was left without water due to a strike at the water utility. "In line, I
got into a conversation with a man from the water utility. He says they
haven't been paid for a long time, they haven't been given funding." "I
called Lisichansk, the water was turned off there, the water utility has
been on strike - there has been no salary since December, supposedly
they were afraid of Skory - a bandit and all that, but they are not
afraid of the new mayor, and they are on strike, the city is without
water, everyone is again with bottles around the city in search of
water." "Yes, there is a very large salary arrears. Many people left the
water utility... Today my mother called, there is no water anymore, it
seems the water utility is on strike," they wrote in local chats then.
True, many Lisi residents have already had no water for more than a year
due to destroyed infrastructure, so nothing has changed for them. On
October 8, a pro-Kremlin Telegram channel published someone's letter:

"Good afternoon! In the city of Lisichansk, water utility workers have
not received wages since May 2023, so the workers quit and go to work
for an organization sponsored by Tatarstan. There has been no water in
the Kirova Gora area for a week now; pipes were brought in for repairs,
but there is no one to repair them, because people are leaving the water
utility en masse. Why do local authorities have such an attitude towards
the residents of the city of Lisichansk???

   Who should I complain to so that things can be restored???"

In the comments to him, they clarified that the employees had already
been paid: "Vodokanal received their salary, I don't know all of it, but
I received it the other day." It turns out that I had to wait about a
month for the result.

And one more piece of evidence from the beginning of September about the
general situation - just to understand what kind of post-apocalypse the
municipal sphere of the city is in, where there were about 50 thousand
people before the big Russian invasion:

"I arrived from Rubezhnoye yesterday. I was there for four days. The
atmosphere is calm. Even suspiciously quiet. Knowing that the battles
are not far away. There were no arrivals. Departures yes. I write as it
is. The yards are clean. I mean from garbage. There are plenty of weeds.
But near my house the men mowed it down themselves. Everything is the
same as before the war. Even the curbs were whitewashed. They write that
there are a lot of people. Not true. I compare according to the market.
Of course there are people, but if you remove the guests, it will
noticeably decrease. Mostly from forty and above. There are very few
young people. This is understandable. There is no work. There are
seventy people signing up for the pension from five in the morning. For
pension recalculation. Mostly all locals. From this I drew my
conclusion. If there is no work, young people will leave, even those who
remain. There will be a city of pensioners. Probably someone will not
like what I wrote. But that's my personal opinion. I compare with
someone I know. They are already leaving, and some are not going to
come. There are two reasons. Schools and work. There are plenty of shops
and shops. There are a lot of vegetables sold at the market. I didn't
find out the prices, because I wouldn't remember anyway. Pig meat is the
most expensive at six hundred. Those who have cars go to other rear
areas to buy groceries. It's cheaper that way. At the end of Mendeleev,
the road is being repaired."

For a man from the bottom, nothing good can come from either side of
this war. To die in meat assaults for the "correct" flag over some piece
of scorched earth or to seek happiness in emigration - that's all they
can offer you and me. So let the forgotten words come true from
Slobozhanshchina and Donbass to Palestine and Israel: peace to huts, war
to palaces!
https://assembly.org.ua/god-raboty-bez-zarplaty-pod-grom-kanonady-trudovoj-konflikt-na-harkovsko-luganskom-fronte/

https://aitrus.info/node/6170
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