Mass Layoffs At Belaruskali

Fearing the miners' outrage, they fire workers selectively, in different work teams.

Cases of covert layoffs have become more frequent at the largest potash enterprise in Belarus. It became known about dozens of cases of non-renewal or termination of contracts with employees of the mining departments of the enterprise, salidarnast.info writes.

According to workers, the reductions affected mines more than ore processing plants. In order not to cause resentment in the team, contracts are not extended selectively in different brigades.

“Many workers are fired as a result of the medical examination, which they do not pass and they are taken out of the mine. If earlier they were offered a workplace without harmful factors, now they may not be offered anything at all,” says an employee of the enterprise.

There are also many cases of non-renewal of short-term employment contracts, especially with former independent trade union activists or those who were seen in the 2020 protests. Earlier, the media reported that the KGB and employees of the security service of the enterprise had transferred to the personnel departments lists of employees with whom employment contracts should be terminated.

“It is difficult to talk about the scope of layoffs, since employees often keep silent about it, but now dozens of cases are known,” the source said.

The reduction in the number of the workforce of the enterprise and the withdrawal of individual workshops to outsourcing has been carried out at Belaruskali for the last 6 years.

Employees believe that in this way, by reducing the number of team workers and increasing the intensity of work for employees, the administration increases the profitability of the enterprise and, if necessary, will be ready to sell it. In addition, the situation was clearly affected by sanctions restrictions on the sale of the company's products.

Previously, workers united in an independent trade union could put forward their demands to the administration, to influence working conditions and wages through a collective agreement. Today, there is one pocket trade union operating at the enterprise, which is led by the actual appointee, the former deputy general director Rybak. Now the Salihorsk enterprise is completely under the control of the general director Ivan Halavaty.