‘Our negotiations with Metro Cash & Carry’s management have been hard to pull through. They refused to produce a single document without getting their Moscow supervisors’ permission first during the public prosecution authorities’ checks, and the number of papers they did produce at the end of the day was very limited. The checks (made on April 2-3, 2009) made it clear that the company allowed for numerous labor code violations; for one, the employees’ wages haven’t been indexed once, while their working areas were way too cold,’ says Chairman of Sverdlovsk Region Trade Union Federation Andrei Vetluzhskikh.

‘Metro Cash & Carry does not have a single trade union anywhere in Russia. An attempt to set up one was made in Moscow, but the workers were put under a lot of pressure by the management. Similarly, the attempts failed in other Russian cities as well. However, the chain’s European stores do have their trade unions,’ he adds.

In the meantime, METRO Cash & Carry’s Yekaterinburg branch set up a trade union (a member of the Russian Federation Trade Union’s local division) on March 5, 2009. A day later, the Regional Manager of Store 30 A. Lyapustin was officially informed of the store workers’ trade union membership and of the need to draw up a document that would ensure their labor rights.