Workers of depot in Baranavichy have to take unpaid leaves

The depot administration denies the rumours, but says unpaid leaves “are welcomed”.

Charter97.org received this information from employees of the railway department in Baranavichy. A ticket seller at the train station “Baranavichy Central” says that the company took a loan to pay salaries and child benefits. Another worker says managers ask to take a two-day unpaid leave every month.

Charter97.org contacted Andrei Sauchuk, the deputy head of the Baranavichy railway depot responsible for ideological work.

– We do not make our employees take unpaid leaves. People taken them if they need. In my departments, a woman recently took an unpaid leave for 14 days after maternity leave, a canteen worker took a 16-day leave in September. The head of the locomotive brigade has today taken a one-day leave for a trip. We have people who haven't taken leaves in the last 6 months, but we also have those who take them every month.

– Why are such rumours circulating if you claim the company has no problems?

– It is an anonymous complaint. It is possible that this person is not our employee. It is possible that he doesn't give a real picture to a site like Charter'97. Someone is angry with managers, for example. We recently fired a worker who has worked since 1990. We fired him for stealing – he stole two shelves from a train. He was fined two penalty units, and we then sacked him in accordance with legislation. He was fired, but who can guarantee that he won't send anonymous complaints about us? We are going to transfer a worker to another position with a lower salary because he didn't perform his work properly. It creates the image of “cruel bosses”.

– How do managers think about workers who take unpaid leaves.

– We welcome it. We want the labour productivity to match the number of staff. The more work we have the more people can work. The situation is as follows: we need either to fire people, or not to hire new employees after someone retires, or keep the current number of staff with unpaid leaves. We don't have a stable volume of work every day. We have 30 carriages today and 130 tomorrow. We cannot reshuffle our staff. We take some measures, but they mostly concern payment schemes. A number of workers are paid by piece. They earn more if they do more. But we don't issue orders to make people take unpaid leaves.