“They totally let us down”

Since September 29, AvtoVAZ, Russia’s largest automobile plant, has been operating on a shortened four-day working week. As reported in the trade union organization of the enterprise, such a regime is in test mode for six months and will be reviewed if the market situation improves. The company has been discussing switching to a shorter week since July.

The reason was the drop in sales of Lada cars. According to Autostat, in the first eight months of this year, 211.3 thousand new Lada passenger cars were sold in the country, which is almost a quarter less than in the same period of 2024.

The reduction in working days led to lower salaries: in the summer, employees were required to sign agreements to switch to a shorter working week, which deprived them of bonuses and overtime. As a result, the earnings of many decreased from 100-120 thousand rubles to less than 50 thousand, which prompted them to look for a new job.

“I am a pensioner, I am over 50 years old. Who needs me? I will continue to work, there are no options. And the young people are all running. The salary is 35-45 thousand — I understand them, it’s ridiculous. Understand, with the prices that are in the city now, we are beggars. Complete ruin and collapse. Every day, there are 20 people in the staff for dismissal from each production. There aren’t enough people. There is no one to work! Horror. They totally let us down,” Oleg [name changed], an employee of the company, shared with ASTRA. According to him, the authorities promise to raise salaries in an attempt to retain employees, but these promises remain unfulfilled, and people leave anyway.

“Everything is bad. People are not appreciated, salaries are small, only senior managers are fat. And all this affects the quality of the cars produced. The demand for Lada dropped sharply after they were replaced with Chinese components designed for a small resource. One follows from the other. Something like that,” said the employee Ivan [name changed].

A former employee of the company, Evgeny [name changed], also confirmed that demand for cars has fallen: “Cars are not selling well. There are three car dealerships in Tolyatti, they are packed with cars. Lada Aura was put on production in January, and they finished producing them in July.”

Another employee of the plant, Denis [name changed], does not know how many AvtoVAZ employees have quit, but says that 2 out of 14 people have left his site. He himself is not going to quit — he has several part-time jobs.

AvtoVAZ denied this reports of mass layoffs. “There are no mass layoffs. The usual turnover, someone quits, someone gets a job,” said Sergey Zaitsev, chairman of the primary trade union organization of AvtoVAZ.