WORLD WORLDWIDE RUSSIA News Journal Update - (en) Russia, Avtonom: What happens if you endure? "Trends of Order and Chaos", episode 128 (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 

Our first story today is about what will happen if you endure. ---- On
the morning of October 13, employees of the Kosulinsky dairy plant,
located in the Sverdlovsk region, found themselves in a completely
stalemate situation. ---- They were not paid wages for 4 months. At the
same time, the workers, day after day begging director Dmitry Bely to
pay them, continued to go to work. And this, naturally, completely
suited the vile manager. He had money, and sometimes he could throw 10
thousand at once to an employee so that he would fall behind. The money
came from the accountant's personal account. But soon the director got
tired of the whining plant, so Bely, maintaining the vibes of the 90s,
closed the plant overnight and disappeared without a trace.

In the morning, employees came to their free work and saw the entrance
gate locked. The personnel department workers knew nothing about the
plant's closure and threw up their hands, and the cunning accountant
quit a few hours before. Well, the director doesn't get in touch, and
it's impossible to find him.

On top of everything else, the employees cannot get a new job - there
were no dismissal orders, and their work books remained locked up on the
territory of the plant.

The state labor inspectorate calls the director's actions illegal. The
employer is obliged to carry out the reduction or liquidation of the
enterprise after notifying the employees, and no later than 2 months in
advance, having collected the signatures of the employees. The company's
wage debt to its employees is enormous. People wrote a statement to the
prosecutor's office in the hope that they would be able to obtain
payments. However, their chances would be much higher if they had not
dutifully dragged themselves to work with their hands outstretched for
almost six months.

An employee is not required to work for free. There is no legal free
labor "for the benefit of the company." All attempts by an employer to
impose free work are illegal. Relying on your boss's word of honor and
integrity is extremely naive. Smiles and praise from superiors cannot be
spread on bread.

If your salary is delayed for more than 15 days, you have every right to
suspend your work by notifying your employer in writing until the
delayed amount is paid. Until the debt is repaid, you don't have to go
to work and, moreover, during the period of absence from work you are
required to pay your "average" salary (Article 142 of the Labor Code of
the Russian Federation).

Well, if you endure it, then you can just as easily end up as a slave to
the next White director.

What happens if you write petitions?
What if you don't tolerate it, but write petitions to your superiors?
More precisely, to the superiors of the authorities, so that they
influence your immediate superior. What will happen then? Our second
story is just about this.

Last week, more than 30 tractor drivers and drivers of one of the
regional divisions of Dorremstroy in Ulyanovsk recorded a video message
in which they said that:

Firstly, the city is not ready for winter - 70% of the equipment is
broken, and workers buy spare parts with their own money (of which there
is really none);

And secondly, the salaries of workers are ridiculous and insignificant -
the average salary is only five thousand rubles, and if you work seven
days a week and put your whole life into work, then with all the
allowances it comes out to about 30 thousand.

Management does not respond to employee complaints. Fun fact: exactly a
year ago, the media published exactly the same news with the same name:
the city is consistently "not ready for winter," the equipment is
consistently broken, the workers are consistently poor.

The workers demanded to hold a meeting with the participation of the top
officials of the city and region so that they could tell them how to
face the winter in such conditions and what money they should live on.
But at first they did not express such a desire. Then the workers filmed
a second video message, and to make it more convincing, they wrote
resignation letters to the entire team.

This move has already worked, and the mayor of Ulyanovsk came to meet
with the working staff of the enterprise. After listening to the
workers, he promised to increase their salaries by 5.5% starting from
the new year. As you can easily calculate, this is a completely
ridiculous amount. If an employee earns 30,000, the increase will be
1,650 rubles. This money will be instantly eaten up by inflation and
will not choke. And even then these are only promises. As the new year
begins, high-ups can easily forget about the promises they made last year.

So, if you write petitions, you can easily become victims of the
promises. Fortunately, we have a lot of them, from ordinary officials to
the president.

What happens if you fight?
And if you don't tolerate the White director, don't trust the promises,
but fight for your rights and interests. What will happen then?

This question will be answered by a very instructive story from the
history of Russia.

What do you think can make kings, generals, general secretaries and
other dictators shudder and make concessions?

One of these means is a general strike, when the entire economic life in
the country is completely paralyzed, and with it, naturally, the ability
of the authorities to govern in the old way. Such events occur
infrequently, but in the history of our country there was such an
episode - the "October General Political Strike".

Its starting point is considered to be October 2, 1905 (September 19,
old style), when workers at the Sytinsky printing house went on strike
in Moscow. They demanded a reduction in the working day to 9 hours and
increased pay. They literally asked the authorities to calculate the
payment not only for letters, but also for commas, which made up 12% of
the typed text. It would seem, how could a general strike start because
of these commas? But then it was a spark that ignited the gunpowder
scattered everywhere, because these events took place in the midst of
the 1905 revolution.

Following Sytinskaya, other Moscow printing houses joined the strike;
then, over the next few days, workers from Moscow bakeries, tobacco
factories, furniture factories, a tram depot, and metallurgical
factories joined the printers. And then a key moment happened - the
All-Russian Railway Union (VZhS) came into play.

 From its very creation (spring 1905), this workers' union hatched plans
for a general strike, carried out appropriate explanatory work among
railway employees and, importantly, agreed to use any convenient moment
to start such a strike. This moment has come, and on October 20, the
VZhS appealed to all railway employees to join the strike. Thus, the
spontaneous beginning merged with the organizational one.

Over the next 10 days, the work of all railway traffic was paralyzed and
most enterprises of the Russian Empire were stopped. And on October 30,
or the 17th according to the old style, Emperor Nicholas II could not
stand it and signed the "Manifesto on the Improvement of State Order."
According to this document, political and civil rights and freedoms were
proclaimed, including freedom of assembly, speech, unions, personal
integrity, a representative legislative body was created - the State
Duma, and the activities of political parties were allowed.

These were not only the demands of the liberals, these were the demands
of organizations of hired workers, such as the All-Russian Railway
Union. Participants in the VZhS rightly believed that the labor movement
cannot develop if it is constantly under the threat of total repression,
and in order to be able to defend their rights and interests in the
workplace, basic civil and political rights are necessary.

Then and only then, through the development of society's abilities for
collective struggle, will it be possible to overcome the "eternal" habit
of people to endure and believe the promises of any bosses.

Well that's all for today! We remind you that in Trends in Order and
Chaos, members of Autonomous Action and other authors give anarchist
assessments of current events. Listen to us on YouTube, SoundCloud and
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https://avtonom.org/news/chto-budet-esli-trendy-poryadka-i-haosa-epizod-128
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