Workers quit MTZ

Inventories of the Minsk Tractor Plant (MTZ) are still full with finished products.

It can be seen in new pictures sent by plant workers to the electronic industry trade union, the website praca-by.info reports.

Workers quit the plant without promised wages while managers continue to assure the enterprise has no problems with sales. Moreover, the MTZ website says proudly that “the plant is in the top 8 of the world's biggest producers of wheeled tractors with a 8-10% share of the global market”.

Pictures from the plant's area full of unsold tractors were handed in to the electronic industry trade union by MTZ workers. They said at a meeting with trade union head Henadz Fiadynich that many workers quit the plant, because wages significantly reduced since the beginning of the year.

Henadz Fiadynich noted that MTZ recently published jobs ads for more than 15 positions, which shows a high turnover of staff.

As for the pictures from the plant, the trade union leader supposes that Lukashenka's task to unload inventories in summer has turned out to be impossible.

“It's a serious problem. The GDP growth at the cost of a high output of products that cannot be sold has backfired,” the trade union leader thinks. “The workers told us that managers had changed the rules of issuing bonuses. Bonuses depend on sales now. It is unfair. It has no relation to a milling machine operator who has a task to produce a number of parts per shift. He did his work and must receive money for it.”

Henadz Fiadynich thinks freezing current assets is another problem.

“We still don't know how many tractors were leased to farms. Many farms didn't need them, but they had to lease them and pay with their products. It is an 'inverted' economy,” the trade union leader said.

According to the National Statistics Committee, Belarus produced 34,400 tractors for agriculture and forest industry in the first half of the year. It is 90.4% of the output of January-June 2012. On July 1, the number of tractors in stocks was 11,500, which is 200.3% of the monthly output.