Former worker of “Gomselmash: Twofold reduction in pay took place

Homel dwellers quit their plant in search of a new job because of the crisis.

A visitor of charter97.org website Alyaksei, a former worker from the unit welding shop could not tolerate that any longer and left his job at Gomselmash plant.

“I have quitted my job. When I came to the shop manager, I have a feeling that he was ready to say “thank you” to me for that. He told me that in the coming months there would be no work was expected.

We had wages Br6 mln 500 thousand once. In recent months it was Br3-3.5 million. I had a piece-rate pay. And it dropped, as beside the fact that the rate was cut, we had fewer working days. In the last two weeks of February we were working on Monday and Tuesday only. But it happened because raw materials, components were out of stock. In the previous months we often didn’t work on Friday and Monday. We applied for an unpaid leave. Many people work half a day and then go home. There were several days when we were told to work two thirds of the day. It all concerns my workshop. The situation in other shops is not better.

There are many combine harvesters on the territory of plant. They say, the debts are huge,” he said.

We remind that the crisis at the largest enterprise of Belarus manufacturing agriculture vehicles had been lasting for almost a year. Recently the sum of the indebtedness of the plant was announced, Br5.1 billion, and a few days ago Gomselmash officially moved to a three-day week.

This situation is characteristic not of Gomselmash only. In particular, the presidium of the Belarusian Trade Union of industry has summed up the results of the work for the year 2014. It was said that the number of workers at industrial enterprises of Belarus fell by more than 10,000. The greatest number of workers was lost by such industrial giants as Atlant, MAZ, Minsk Motor Plant and Barysau-based plant Avtogidrousilitel. Audit was carried out in 173 enterprises, 1,184 violations of the labour legislation were detected.