Wild cat strike and a workers ' revolt in the Amur region in Russia

Gazprom workers in revolt against unpaid wages
Gazprom workers in revolt against unpaid wages

From a comrade, I received the following information.
Following his text, I propose solidarity actions.

Workers in the Amur region destroyed the office of a company that is building a gas processing plant for Gazprom. Several dozen builders broke into the office of "Renaissance Heavy industries", a contractor involved in the construction of the Amur gas processing plant. It also became known that workers took over the store and took away some of the products. This is due to the fact that during the quarantine, food prices increased by 2 times, while workers stopped receiving full wages.

See YouTube.

Submitted by Fredo Corvo on July 21, 2020

This is no longer a struggle with monuments (like in the USA) or other examples of bourgeois ugliness, but a real proletarian uprising. Most of the workers are migrants, Uzbeks, and Kyrgyz. However, there are Turks and Filipinos among the workers. At the same time, the Renaissance company that organizes work on this construction in the Russian village is a Turkish company. This is a class conflict of the era of globalization.

Workers who live on the territory of the construction are systematically deceived.

The employer recruits most of the workers for a month, then they are dismissed under various pretexts, without paying their wages, and then employers recruit new ones. Those who are lucky, stay to work, but also from time to time become victims of deception. This happened to the participants of the riot, who were not paid part of their salaries for 2 months.

The monthly salary of workers is 600 dollars. Workers live in poor conditions - 8 people per 20 square meters. Their working day is 11 hours. They work for 1 weekend in 2 weeks. If you do not come to work for 1 day due to illness, the bosses take from your salary the amount equal to the salary for 2 working days! Transportation costs are not paid. There are no vacations. The food in the factory canteen is of disgusting quality. At the same time, the bosses take money from the workers ' wages for this food. Altogether is a violation of the obligations that the bosses took on earlier.

Among the workers, there are many cases of coronavirus. Living conditions contribute to infection. As a result of the quarantine, prices in the store increased by 2-3 times. This last circumstance prompted the workers to seize the store and take away the products.

Workers seized part of the buildings in the village and took food from a store. They are opposed by riot police. A diplomat from Uzbekistan went there. We are talking about a revolt of 1000 workers. The riot continues. The Russian Governor promised the workers to return their money. But this has not been done yet. The village, which was captured by workers, is surrounded by police, riot police, and the Russian army, including armored vehicles. The government has opened criminal cases against the workers.

The workers probably consult among themselves about what to do next, but they have not created an organized revolutionary proletarian structure (regular assemblies and an elected workers ' Council for operational management, whose delegates can be replaced at any time). The workers also do not have a bourgeois-reformist structure (such as any trade Union) designed to introduce conflict into the field of legal systemic measures (inviting and hiring lawyers, negotiating with the employer, attracting the media, etc.). So this is partly why the situation is uncertain.

Today we received reports that the police entered the territory where the workers were located and made arrests of 11 people. These people may face jail time.

(21-07-2020)

P.S.
Perhaps I will add an important thing about the strike in the Amur region. There are workers of two ethnic groups – Kyrgyz and Uzbek. Their joint struggle is of exceptional importance. The fact is that conflicts and bloody ethnic cleansing constantly break out between these ethnic turkic-speaking groups. It may have gone back centuries in the confrontation between the nomadic-shepherds and farmers. This conflict is currently being used and fomented by various bourgeois groups. This happens frequently and during the Osh region massacre in Kyrgyzstan, dozens of Uzbeks were killed and at least 100,000 were forced to flee. Therefore, the fact that the workers of these two ethnic groups seem to have been able to cooperate is of great significance.

(22-7-2020)

------------- So far the information from Russia ---------------

Appeal for solidarity

I believe this is not petitioning governments or trade-unions, nor manifesting at embassies.
Solidarity should call workers to recognize in the struggle in Russia their own struggle:
- against the effects of capitalist crisis,
- against the class effects of COVID,
- against the effects of imperialist war,
- against all efforts to divide workers by nation, language, color or religion.

The best solidarity is workers struggle against the same enemy, world capitalism.
Let's get rid of those who sabotage our struggles: the state unions and parliamentary parties.

Workers, we can rely only on our class organizations:
general workers' assemblies and elected and revocable committees.

Comments

jura

3 years 8 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by jura on July 21, 2020

Thanks! Are there any reports of this in the Russian media?

Fredo Corvo

3 years 8 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Fredo Corvo on July 21, 2020

When looking in Google for a photo, I found several news items. So, try!

Foristaruso

3 years 8 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Foristaruso on July 22, 2020

The web page of IWA section in Russia reported about it with the quoting of Russian medias: https://aitrus.info/node/5521. And there was another strike of building workers in Petersburg: https://aitrus.info/node/5523