From PROLETARSKAYA GAZETA – Leningrad
Translated by Rafael Martinez
SUMY – January 13, 2009 – about 33 shops, hundreds of workers along with some employees of other departments "Zavoda weighted drilling and lads pipes" JSC SBPO – in Frunze were "present all day at work but did not work. They demanded the restoration to work of 24 of their comrades who were fired the same day, as well as changes in the working conditions. Two days before this action they accepted their union Solidarity: and demanded that the fired workers be rehired. The Administration did not comply and the Director who came to the plant called the trade unionists "hundreds of idiots". Police were called but the strikers held their ground even though threatened with court action.
The solidarity of workers is firm and the strike action is continuing.
DONESHCHINA – in the last days of January 2009, the workers of the Starokmatoraskoho machine building plant, upset over not payment of their wages for weeks on end and working conditions, held a spontaneous strike rally. The last time these workers received their wages was last November 18, 2008!
The plants had no heat, no hot water to wash hands from oil and acid
substances. Workers were forced to buy light bulbs with their own
money. Toilets do not work and workers tried to use the management's
toilets but were barred from using them. The management is doing
everything possible to disrupt the unity of the workers and just wait
for the promises that the director made.
FEBRUARY 2, 2009 – about 300 workers of the Kherson building plant (during Soviet time it was called Kherson Combines) started a protest because they were not paid since September of 2008 and the private owners want to close the plant. The workers then held a rally, elected a 5-member Committee to talk to the Deputy Governor who agreed to talk to the owners. But the factory was owned by a Church-registered Company.
The strikers sent their demand in a written document to the state authorities, demanding among other things, the nationalization of this combine plant and to make certain that the harvester combines produced go on the market to be sold.
In case these demands are not met, the union members will take other
decisive actions to safeguard the livelihood of our 1,000 members.
There was a promise that a negotiating meeting shall be arranged and wages paid. After that the strike was halted.
The bourgeoisie is vitally interested in the elimination of all trade unions and that no contacts or agreements be signed, no pay increases, no health benefits, no vacations, no pensions and no collective agreements, and absolutely no strikes or pickets against the owners! Is this not slavery?
If this is not working, then they usher in company union leadership – cushy jobs, no strikes and no demands on the management – and besides all that the company trade union bosses are many times involved in business, in holding shares in the enterprise. These company trade unions have long ago been discredited.
The systematic crisis of capitalism deepens and is spreading all over the world – big sharks eat little sharks and capitalist governments are bailing out these crooks with people’s money.
Unemployment in Ukraine and in Russia has dramatically increased as well as non-payment of wages. There are more and more strikes and occupation of enterprises by the workers.Some workers want to struggle by the capitalist "legitimate methods", others want to show solidarity with their trade union brothers and sisters in whatever industry they are striking at. The trade union struggle must be turned into a political struggle, to destroy the bourgeois class.
The capitalist class which led to the current economic crisis wants to find a way out by organizing a new imperialist war as they did in WWI and WWII.
To get rid of wars, you have to destroy the cause itself. This can only be done by an organized proletariat. We the workers are the most progressive class in the world. We must eliminate private property that enriches the ruling class.
We will eliminate the cause of our troubles as did our great ancestors in 1917 – the Great October Socialist Revolution.
As was reported in the mass media in 2002, the citizens of Ukraine and Russia -Yakovenko, Gerasimov, Berdyugin, Zinchenko, Alekseev, Polskaya, Romanov, Plevo, Danilov and Smirnov were arrested and given long sentences due to the so-called Odessian Case No. 144. They were indicted for the alleged crimes against Ukraine and so-called terrorism. The arrested comrades listed above were open about their anti-capitalist convictions.
This gives us all the grounds to consider this trial in Ukraine as political! These comrades were subjected to brutal torture and demeaning aggravation in order to try and get a confession from them. As a result of this torture the 20-year old student Berdyugin died. The Proletarskaya Gazeta reported all of this in 2004 already and protests were sent to the authorities.
Then there took the extradition of Danilov and Smirnov to Russia without any family visits, or human rights representatives who anted to visit them or to get a defense lawyer.
We believe that the Russian authorities are preparing a political process under the guise of a criminal investigation with the sole purpose to discredit them in the eyes of the people and the revolutionary class struggles and the communist movement in order to divert this growing struggle towards the path of opportunism, in order to divert the movement and to put the struggle of the oppressed masses under the control of today's revisionists.
We call on all workers and progressive forces to defend these Russian and Ukrainian political prisoners. Write to the Russian and Ukrainian Embassies in your country to protest. Or write in support to:
Russia 103009, Moscow, Okhotny Ryad. Dom 1, State Duma of Russia MP, co-chair of Zashchita – Shein Oleg V.
Russia 190121, Leningrad, Angliski Prospekt, Dom 22, Kv, 53 – Pyzhov Anatoliy V.
Anatoly Pyzhov, Secretary of Relations of Zashchita
Andrey Drozdov, Chief Editor of Proletarskaya GazetaClose this page to return.