Strike at METP Continues

The Minsk Electrotechnical Plant named after V.I. Kozlov has been stopped.

Two shops, 16th and 6th, are on strike. It means that the entire plant (3 000 people) cannot operate because of it, Belaruskali Strike Committee reports.

The electrotechnical plant generates the main profit by selling transformers. The transformer consists of a tank body, the core, etc. No tank bodies - no transformer.

The shop 16 produces these tank bodies. Forty-fifty highly qualified employees do this work. They have joined the strike. Shop No. 6 has 30-40 key workers who also joined the strike.

The stock of the tank bodies was empty back in July. Since then, the work of the whole plant depends on the production of shops No. 16 and 6.

Now 30-40 per cent of the major workers remain in the shops. The rest have sick leave, a day off, unpaid leave. Those who remained do the minimum to avoid dismissal.

Yesterday the deputy director for ideological work came to the strikers in the shop No. 16. He brought order, signed by the director, to suspended instigators from work due to failure to discharge professional duties. It did not fix the situation; there is no specific leader. The workers decided to act together.

The shop manager and the deputy worked during the second and the third shift respectively. It is a unique situation as the superiors usually work till 5 pm.

The plant manager, A.G. Rachytsky, used all the levers of pressure: promised bonuses, threatened with the bonus revocation, dismissal, then tried to talk to the workers face-to-face to deprive them of support of comrades. He promised that the plant would buy components from Turkey, which meant that the plant did not need those workers. He promised that each of them would have to cover the lost profit of 30-40 thousand rubles. The workers listened to it, but the strike continued.

The guys are strong and brave. However, they wait for other enterprises to support them. Designers, engineering staff are also on strike, an open or work-to-rule one. It is not as noticeable as if a machine is stopped. However, these two shops play a major role in the strike. Therefore, they suffer the highest pressure.