A worker employed at UC RUSAL’s Ural smelter tried to commit suicide because his labor contract wouldn’t be renewed. It is reported that the hydrometallurgical equipment operator Vladimir Kalugin tried to kill himself by slitting his throat open right in his workplace.

Shortly before this suicide attempt, Kalugin was informed that his fixed-term contract was not going to be renewed. He still had three years to go before reaching the official retirement age.

‘First aid was provided immediately at the scene of the incident, then Vladimir was placed in the hands of surgeons from the trauma unit at Municipal Hospital No. 2; the emergency surgery saved his life,’ the patient’s co-workers report.

‘The fixed-term contract system that RUSAL management heavily relies upon allows the company legitimately to get rid of workers around retirement age. The thing is, if the employer decides not to renew the contract for some reason, even the worker’s significant contribution to the company makes no difference,’ Uralsky Rabochiy says.

‘One could hear stories like this at pipe and metallurgical plants in Kamensk-Uralsky, Severouralsk, and Krasnoturyinsk, since RUSAL has enterprises there as well and their management have no scruples in their dealings with the personnel when it comes to ‘optimizing’ the business,’ the newspaper reports.