Sevastopol trade unions: hunger strikes may rise at other BSF enterprises

18.10.2010 Leaders of Sevastopol trade unions comment a 2-day hunger strike at Black Sea Fleet (BSF) Design Engineering Bureau which employees went into such desperate measures because Russian defense ministry had not paid wages for 1.5 years.

Director of city association of catering trade personnel Irina Pachinskaya said that the next enterprise to undergo such critical situation would be BSF Public Services Center.

"They haven't worked for 8 months due to lack of orders; Russian defense ministry had not issued tenders. As for now, tenders have been held, and there are some orders, but only till December. I've spoken with the director, and she said they'd been warned that there would be no orders in the first quarter of 2011. Then BSF promises to resume orders since April", said Mrs. Pachinskaya in the interview to New Region.

Hunger strikes as extreme form of protest may be conducted in Sevastopol not only at Russian but at Ukrainian enterprises suffering wage arrears too, says the director of city council of trade unions Elena Kaluzhenko.

"We cannot exclude anything when people are driven to despair by wage arrears. As trade unions, we consider it is better to initiate staff debates and write petitions right after such indebtedness appears, and not allow the crisis to develop", said Mrs. Kaluzhenko in the interview to New Region.

The Sevastopol mayor Valery Saratov supposes that Black Sea Fleet was unprepared for the staff reductions period; the issues of retirement benefit refunds had not been worked out, said the mayor at the meeting with trade unions' activists.

"The situation is critical. But BSF Commander promised to repay wade arrears for employees of 13th Ship Repair Plant, 172nd Design bureau, and BSF Building Dept not later than this year", Saratov said.