First lawsuit for the instigator

The administration of the Ford plant appreciated the actions of the trade union leaders

The organizers of last year's autumn strike at the Ford plant near St. Petersburg will be offered compensation through the court for part of the losses of the automobile company. At the end of last week, the leaders of one of the most obstinate trade unions in the country received in the Vsevolozhsk District Court weighty boxes of documents and notices of claims that the plant management filed against its workers. The total amount that the company is trying to recover from labor law violators exceeds 4.5 million rubles. This is exactly how much, according to Ford management, the company lost as a result of a short strike that trade unions carried out on November 7 last year.

According to the leader of the trade union of Vsevolozhsk automakers, Alexei Etmanov, “the grounds in the claims are the same as in the reprimands that were announced to us last year, although we through the court achieved the removal of penalties.” As is known, the administration of the enterprise considered the short one-day strike illegal and achieved recognition as such in court - on the basis that notification of the strike was received by management less than ten days before it began. But the workers, in turn, went to court to challenge the disciplinary sanctions imposed by the management, and also won. Thus, the court took a contradictory position - on the one hand, confirming that the strike was carried out in violation of legal procedures, and on the other, prohibiting the action participants from being punished for this.

Perhaps it is precisely this “ambiguity” that the plant managers are trying to take advantage of. Moreover, voluminous statements of claim - a thousand sheets each - were presented not to all strikers, but only to the “initiators” of the action. When, in early November 2007, Ford workers demanded that the owners of the enterprise change their operating hours, and management refused to negotiate, the union headed by Mr. Etmanov convened a conference. Of the 36 conference participants, 31 people supported the strike. Although they expressed not only their personal opinion, but also the opinion of the trade union groups that delegated them to the conference, it was those who voted “for” who were asked to pay off the losses of the plant. The claims emphasize that “the deliberate actions of the delegates, expressed in voting for a deliberately illegal strike, led to its holding and, as a consequence, to the plaintiff’s significant losses.”

According to the Ford management, during the 19-hour strike the plant did not produce 271 cars, and was also forced to pay wages to those workers who did go on shift but were unable to work - the assembly line was not started. Now they intend to collect approximately 150 thousand rubles from each participant who voted “for” the conference. True, it is still quite difficult to assess the prospects of this trial, given the fact that the verdicts in the legal epic of Ford and the factory union are made in favor of one side, then in favor of the other.

Alexey Etmanov considers the very appearance of the lawsuits to be more of an act of intimidation and a kind of prophylaxis to prevent new strikes. In a conversation with a Vremya Novostei correspondent, he expressed optimism about the next round of the legal saga and recalled that members of the trade union he headed even managed to obtain compensation for moral damages for the disciplinary sanctions imposed by the administration. “And now, on the same grounds, we are being sued for material damage. I’m sure they will lose again,” he said.

True, the court reduced the amount of moral damages - instead of 50 thousand rubles requested by the workers. appointed only 1 thousand. In the case of compensation for material damage, such a “discount” is unlikely - Ford’s statement of claim contains a reference to the provisions of the Civil Code, which state that “harm caused to the person or property of a citizen, as well as harm caused to the property of a legal person is subject to compensation in full by the person who caused the harm.”

Natalya SHKURENOK, St. Petersburg