Lie down on the sleepers

What do the railroads want?

invisible protest. On Monday, May 26, a large conference of locomotive depot workers has been scheduled: they will decide whether to hold a new strike. And on the same day - a rally of railway workers, right in front of the building of Russian Railways in Moscow. The trade union of locomotive brigades (RPLBZH) warns: the next action can begin at any moment

Employees of all locomotive depots of the Moscow Railway received an appeal signed by war and labor veterans of the Moscow-2 depot. The veterans urge the workers “not to dishonor themselves and us”: “... with deep indignation,” the old people write, “we learned about the case when a number of workers at the Pushkino and Zheleznodorozhnoye depots abandoned their trains, refusing to work for the sake of their own ambitions” .

Opponents of Lokomotiv

“I want to learn my child normally,” says Nikolai, a first-class machinist, standing on the platform. - They quietly put several workers (4-5 people in each depot) since January with personal salaries of up to 60 thousand rubles, and forgot about the rest. I myself receive more than my colleagues - 30 thousand rubles. I have been working at the depot for more than 25 years, and no one pays for the length of service, although they should have. ¹ My assistant is standing there, he has 18 thousand, he is still a young guy, sensible. We also have regional allowances, in the provinces everything is tougher. And look at our depot locksmiths: 10,000 rubles, no more.”

Depot "Pushkino". Morning. There is a shift change: some teams are just getting ready to board the electric trains, others have already finished work. Intersect in the corridor, exchange news.

“I don’t know a single driver who would support Lokomotiv in football,” say the depot workers. Why should we worry about him. Money is pumped in there, but we, the machinists, are not put in anything. So we were openly told when we were on strike and until television arrived, that we were rednecks, sheep, that we were nobody, that we should be silent, and not carry out actions. I don’t want to remember Yakunin at all: he’s not even a railway worker, but just Putin’s neighbor in the country.

On the walls of the Pushkino depot there are two stands opposite each other. One stand is of the Russian Trade Union of Railway Administrative Transport (Rosprofzhela), which is part of the FNPR. The workers among themselves dubbed it the "cult-mass sector". “Organize fishing, take it to the Christmas tree, collect money,” the machinists say. - But Rosprofzhel does not solve the problems of workers. Only now they have put up leaflets that they are allegedly seeking a salary increase for us.” Another stand is from the disgraced RPLBZH. This stand disappeared several times, but the machinists found it every time (sometimes behind the stairs, sometimes on the street) and hung it in its original place. Almost everyone in this depot is a “rebel”, 85 people out of 110 were on strike. By the way, not only members of the RPLBZh participated in the April strike. Supported and sympathetic loners, and some of those who were part of Rosprofzhel.

At the family council

The strike on April 28 came as a surprise to Russian Railways, although it had been brewing for a long time. The railroad workers planned to go on strike on November 28, 2007 - not only in Moscow, but in 10 other regions of Russia. “We announced the strike in advance, as required by law,” says RPLBJ chairman Yevgeny Kulikov, “but Russian Railways went to court, and on November 23 it recognized the planned strike as illegal. Naturally, we could not start it after that, otherwise the workers would be brought to disciplinary sanctions. Instead of dialogue, the company became even more hardened towards the union. Almost all of us were thrown out of the premises. In general, they came to Pushkino with a grinder, they cut off the hinges on the doors.

The editors have at their disposal copies of the statements of the machinists included in the RPLBZH. The machinists write that they were called by the management of the depot and demanded to leave the trade union under the threat of being evicted from the dormitories.

And Rosprofzhel then began to send out "letters of happiness" to the wives of the machinists. Wives were informed: “At the moment, for reasons unknown to us, your husband left the Russian Trade Union of Railway Workers and became a member of the alternative Russian Trade Union of Locomotive Crews ... We ask you to discuss and decide at the “family council” which Trade Union your breadwinner should be in ” .

On May 20, a court hearing was held against Nikolai Pavlov, the leader of the primary trade union organization RPLBZh of the Pushkino depot. The transport prosecutor's office opened an administrative case against him under Art. 20.26 h. 2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation for illegal actions to call for the unauthorized abandonment of railway workers of their jobs.

The hearing was open but held behind closed doors. Participants were asked in turn to go to the office of Judge Tatyana Buglakova. There they sat, right at the desk. In the corridor one could hear fragments of phrases: “You have created a threat to the life and health of passengers!”; “Were you printing flyers at 5 in the morning?”

Before the trial, Russian Railways representatives told The New Times that they had come here only as witnesses and were not very familiar with the case. One of the interlocutors later turned out to be the head of the legal service of the Moscow Railways, Alexei Gridin.

After the hearing, Nikolai Pavlov said: “The strike is called illegal. The prosecutor all the time says that we have created a threat to the life and health of passengers.” ²

“They called me at home and threatened to fire me,” says another machinist (he is in his 40s). - And even my mother-in-law supported me in this matter, she said: “Stand to the end!” And if the mother-in-law stood up, then I’m doing everything right. ”

On the day of the strike, not only the brigades of the Gorky and Yaroslavl directions stood up. In the Domodedovo depot, one person was also on strike, the machinist Dmitry Krayushkin. He was fired. “May 5,” says Krayushkin, “I was summoned to the authorities and told that they were dismissing me because I was administratively unmanageable. They wrote "truancy" in the work book. I intend to file a claim, I will be restored. All the strikers were reprimanded for unauthorized refusal to work (there are no words “strike” or “labor dispute” in the reprimands), they were deprived of bonuses, some may be fired. “We will repulse everyone,” says one of the machinists taking over the shift, “we will not let anyone offend. If necessary, we will all stand up.”

Protest rejected

“The position of Russian Railways has remained the same, we consider the strike illegal,” the press service of Russian Railways told The New Times. - The Moscow City Court, having studied the situation, the rights and powers of the trade union, recognized that the strike violates the law "On Railway Transport". After that, an order was received from the transport prosecutor's office, which was transferred to the trade union. But the trade union has its own program of action, which is pointless to comment on.”

“Of course, trade unions have other forms of struggle for their rights, but these mechanisms do not work well,” notes Ruben Badalov, a member of the FNPR general council. — Yes, union representatives should be held accountable for their actions. But those who pushed these railroad workers onto these rails, who forced them to go on strike, should also be held accountable.”

“One of the objectives of the strikes is to break through this wall,” says Nikolai Pavlov of the RPLBZh trade union at Pushkino. - To make people think that not everything is good with Mr. Yakunin. His people are offended, wages are low, norms are violated, the constitutional rights of workers, the rights of trade unions. And we don't break anything. Yes, they say the strike was organized illegally. How can it be organized legally? We understand that if two people get into the control cabin and carry 2.5 thousand people, then they should be free. They must make the right decision at any time in order to take people safe and sound. Slaves cannot be given this responsibility by definition. And if a slave sits in the place of the driver, then this is where the threat to traffic safety is.”

According to the President of the Confederation of Labor of Russia Alexander Shepel, the procedure for holding a strike prescribed in the Labor Code of the Russian Federation is incredibly complicated. “This procedure effectively took away the right of unions to make preparations and call strikes,” he tells The New Times. “Fellow slave owners have decided that workers have too many rights. This was done in order to pay less and exploit more. Nothing personal just business".

“According to official data,” says Oleg Shein, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Labor and Social Policy, “in 2006 there were 8 strikes in the country, in 2007 there was only one. Meanwhile, there were 1,049 labor conflicts accompanied by a suspension of work last year. That is, 1,048 strikes were not noticed, as it were. The point is not that people want to break the law, but that this law cannot be enforced. They cannot help but strike, they are forced to strike. They are not negotiated with, they are not considered at all.”

Nikolay Pavlov adds: “If we do not protect ourselves, no one will protect us. If the government were strong, the government would be just. And the authorities are afraid that people will unite. They don’t recognize us as representatives of employees and, on this basis, they don’t want to have a dialogue with us.”

According to the forecasts of the Center for Trade Union Studies of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements, in 2008 the number of labor conflicts and strikes in Russia will increase.

On April 28, at 4:00 a.m., a strike began at the Pushkino locomotive depot (Yaroslavl direction of the Moscow Railways) and Zheleznodorozhnaya (Gorky direction of the Moscow Railways). The depot "Domodedovo" (1 person) was also partially on strike. A total of 190 people participated in the action. Without prior notice to the employer, the crews refused to drive the electric trains. The demands of the strikers were: higher wages for all workers, and not just those who were given personal salaries by management; restoration of canceled allowances for length of service; ending discrimination on trade union grounds. According to RIA Novosti, at a conference call on May 8, Russian Railways President Vladimir Yakunin promised that the salary of railway workers would be increased by 12% from July. The Moscow City Court declared the strike illegal.

Karine Clément, director of the Collective Action Institute: “In Europe, many countries have a “minimum service rule”. The trade union needs to coordinate with the railroad management how many brigades will be on the line during the strike so that traffic is not completely paralyzed. Under this condition, railway workers have the right to strike. But, for example, in France there are no restrictions on the strikes of railway workers, they go on strike as they like. Sarkozy's government is proposing a "minimum service rule" and the proposal has been met with loud protests. It makes no sense to compare the recent strike in Russia with the protests in the West. In most European countries, legislation regulates this process: the law spells out how to apply, how the employer should respond. The whole complexity of the strike there lies in the social plane: how massive it will be, how convincing, how much public opinion will support it.”

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1 On March 4, 2008, the Judicial Collegium for Civil Cases of the Moscow City Court decided to pay all employees of Russian Railways the monthly remuneration for long service, depending on the continuous length of service in railway transport.
2 According to paragraph b) of Article 413 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, strikes are illegal and strikes are not allowed in organizations directly related to ensuring the life of the population (this includes railway transport), “in the event that strikes pose a threat to the defense of the country and the security of the state, life and people's health."