Granit company worker goes on hunger strike

A driver of BelAZ truck at Granit company Leanid Gladzevich has announced a hunger strike protesting against pressure on members of the independent trade union.

The activist of the independent trade union says that he is on hunger strike for the second day. However, he was able to inform Radio Svaboda about that only now. He was at a police department previously and spent a day there.

“The management of Granit company started to exert pressure on the parents of my wife, for her to influence me in her turn, and to make me abandon membership in the independent trade union. As a result, my parents even started to conflict with my wife. And wife started to conflict with me because of that. Yesterday evening I came home from work and asked my wife to prepare a meal. But she refused, we started to quarrel, and there was already police to detain me. I think it had been framed up by the administration of Granit company. As a result, I found myself at a police detriment, and I was released only today. I have not eaten anything for two days,” Leanid Gladzevich said.

Gladzevich says that he plans to continue his hunger strike until the independent trade union of Granit company receives registration successfully:

“The demands of my hunger strike are the following: I want the chairman of the regional executive committee Kanstantsin Sumar to come to me for conversation. I will inform the hospital about my hunger strike for doctors to know about that and observe my state of health. I will struggle for the independent trade union at Granit enterprise to be registered, for pressure on workers to be stopped. I demand from Sumar to give a possibility for our independent trade union branch to get premises for registration.”

Leanid Gladzevich is one of the most active members of the independent trade union at Granit company, said the leader of the trade union branch Aleh Stakhaevich. Gladzevich was one of the first who had written a statement that he withdraws from the official trade union at the enterprise. Leanid Gladzevich was also active in speaking at the meeting of workers where Kanstantsin Sumar was present.

The activist is sure that independent trade unions should exist simultaneously with the official ones, at every enterprise of Belarus.

“It would be probably easier to develop the economy of Belarus if an independent trade union would defend interests of workers, and an official trade union would defend interests of directorship.”

We reminds that about 600 workers of Granit company in Luninets district left the official trade union in late December and formed a branch of the independent trade union of miners. They were dissatisfied with and low wages and the work of the official trade union. Workers addressed the independent trade union, and after that the executive management started to exert pressure on them.