FTUB copycats Lukashenka’s “vertical of power”

The presidium of the Council of Federation of the Trade Unions of Belarus passed a decree on establishing a new position.

Information about this decision was received by praca-by.info from unofficial sources and confirmed by the secretary of the deputy chairman of the Federation of the Trade Unions of Belarus Alena Mankevich.

Journalists could not find out details, in particular, what duties of the new employees will be, why it had been necessary to increase the huge staff of the Federation, while it is already big enough. The reason was Alena Mankevich’s too busy schedule: she was “at consultations”, “outside the office”, “at the Labour Ministry”, “at consultations” again, “she had just left” – and that lasted for three days, the secretary answered in an apologizing voice answering the numeral attempts to receive a comment on the cadres decision of the pro-governmental FTUB.

According to the chairman of the independent REP Trade Union, Henadz Fyadynich, this decision had been dictated by the government obviously.

- The present chairman of the Federation, as well as the previous one, is not independent in his decisions. Most likely he is implementing an order from higher authorities, - Fyadynich believes. – For today there are enough representatives of the FTUB in each region. There are regional councils, their chairman, as far as I know, are not even elected, they are appointed. I am almost sure that people who will occupy the new positions would not be workers. These positions are intended for trusted people, maybe former members of the Belarusian Republican Youth Union, employees of district and regional administrations. One can suppose that it is connected with the pre-election campaign. But the most important thing in this story is the fact that rank-and-file members of the FTUB, who support these new employees by their fees, do not know about this decision. And there will be more than 100 persons. We have 118 districts and 6 regions. In the time of Hancharyk (the chairman of the FTUB in 1986-2001) trade unions transferred 1.2% of fees to the FTUB, and the maximum was 2.4%, and even these figures triggered indignation. Now it is almost 7%.

The trade union leader believes that the new workers of the Federation would have duties of controllers.

- I think that they are going to be a kind of controllers and trade unions’ ideologists. In any case, this decision would not improve the situation with workers’ rights in any way, – Henadz Fyadynich believes.