Russian Workers Start Hunger Strike over Wage Cuts

Sixteen Russian workers have begun a hunger strike in protest against wage cuts, mounting a rare show of dissent in a country where unemployment rates have soared to their highest level in a decade. Workers at the Zlatoust steel mill, owned by a private steel group, ESTAR, are angry at plans to reduce salaries by a third, They have also accused, management of threatening to cut jobs, says the protest organizer, Alexander Negrebetskikh.

The hunger strike is taking place in a trade union office on the premises of the Zlatoust plant, and the protesters have no plans to go home, Negrebetskikh said. Management, using the threat of redundancies, is forcing the workers to sign agreements under which they would receive two-thirds of their basic salaries. This is only 5,000 rubles ($140). The steel plant employs 5,000 workers.

About 800,000 Russians lost their jobs in December and January, taking the total number of unemployed to more than 6 million, or 8.1 percent of the working population. Steelmakers have been particularly affected as construction projects have ground to a halt and consumers buy fewer new cars. Russia’s average monthly salary in January, the latest month for which data is available, was 15,200 rubles ($437.43).

Union Membership in the Netherlands Grows Despite Economic Crisis

Over recent months, FNV-affiliated unions have seen their membership rise somewhat, despite the economic crisis. Membership gains seem to have been caused by specific sectoral initiatives, such as the organizing campaign in the cleaning sector and by measures to prevent mass unemployment.

The largest union, FNV Bondgenoten, grew by 2,500 members since Jan. 1, and now has 476,000 members. In the cleaning sector, where an aggressive organizing campaign is in progress, a few hundred workers have joined the union. At Schiphol Airport, 500 cleaners became union members. Education campaigns at vocational schools also seem to have contributed to membership growth.

As of Jan.1, the FNV-affiliated unions of the self-employed also saw a substantial growth in members. The total FNV membership rose by 180,000, as a result of the senior citizens’ union, ANBO, joining the FNV. FNV-affiliated unions now have nearly 1.4 million members.

Young New Zealand Call Center Workers Strike for an Hourly Pay Raise

A dozen call center workers, many of them teenagers, walked off the job on the night of March 11 at the research company, Oceania Customer Interaction Services (OCIS), leaving their briefings with the company’s clients, as they signaled their dissatisfaction at their pay rate of $12.50 an hour. The company does research for New Zealand’s large government departments and city councils.

Teenaged union delegates Kyran Stoltenkamp and Paul Bell-Butler, who led the strike, were threatened by managers who said they would call the police after strikers went to the lunchroom to eat pizza and play table tennis. Paul said: “We weren’t scared, because what we are doing is showing transnational corporations that North Shore teenagers are not apathetic…This dispute is about more than a couple of dollars an hour. It’s about young workers standing up to global corporations and demanding respect.” The workers want their wages to be increased to $15 an hour.

The union, Unite, is negotiating for better wages and conditions at seven research companies in Auckland as part of the Calling for Change campaign. Australian market researchers earn $22 an hour

Volvo Cars in Sweden Freezes Salaries to Avoid More Layoffs

Swedish automaker Volvo Cars announced on March 12 a freeze on salaries of all employees and a slash of executive pay in an attempt to avoid further redundancies. Volvo Cars also signed a unique agreement with local unions, which may mean the company can avoid further job cuts this year.

“The agreement means that all employees — both white collars and blue collars — will contribute to lowering personnel costs during 2009 through, for example, postponed salary revisions.” The company also said that 40 top executives had agreed to accept a 5 percent pay cut between April and December. No bonuses will be paid this year or next, the company added.

Volvo Cars was purchased by Ford in 1999. It has nearly 20,000 employees, 15,000 of whom work in Sweden. The company plans to slash more than 4,000 jobs. The Swedish carmaker was on March 12 waiting for word on whether it would receive a massive loan from the European Investment Bank.

Israel Will Cut Foreign Workers to Help Its Own Jobless

Plans to cut back on the number of foreign workers in Israel and encourage Israelis to work in their place have been set in motion as a response to the country’s rising unemployment and growing economic recession, representatives of the government announced. According to sources in the Finance Ministry, the number of foreigners arriving here to work in construction and agriculture could be significantly reduced in the near future with concrete programs already under way to retrain unemployed Israelis in these fields.

“We are already making a concerted effort to reduce the number of foreign workers,” said Meir Shpigler, director of the Foreign Workers Department of the Immigration Authority. The construction industry has received 12,000 fewer workers than it did in the same period last year. Agriculture workers have been cut back by 18,000.

Currently, there are close to 100,000 legal migrant workers in Israel and up to 150,000 here illegally. Most are employed in construction, agriculture and care-giving. Shpigler doubted that the number of foreign workers in care-giving would change, because the need in Israel was too great

Workers at Iranian Beverage Factory Strike for 5 Months’ Back Pay

Some 250 workers at Mushab, an Iranian beverage factory, went on strike March 2 to protest not being paid their New Year bonuses and wages for the past five months. On the following two days, the workers gathered behind the factory gates with placards demanding their bonuses and pay. None of the factory management or government officials paid any attention to the strike until the second day of the strike, when one of the officials from the Labor Office and a number of Intelligence Ministry agents turned up at the factory. They attended a meeting with the general manager and workers’ representatives to discuss the issue of back pay..

During the meeting, the Labor Office official belittled the workers’ demands, saying there were many factories with six months or more in arrears, and workers should not insist on being paid all of their wages at one time. Worker representatives pointed out that Mushab was producing at full capacity with two shifts. The meeting ended with the boss agreeing to pay three months of back wages and the two months bonus by the end of the year (March 20), and that the rest of the back wages would be paid after the New Year holidays.

But a few hours after the meeting, the factory’s general manager told the workers there is no money to give them and the factory gates would be locked shut. The angry workers dared him to do it “so that you will see what workers can do.” The workers at Nushab declared they would continue their strike until their demands are met.

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