‘Severouralsk Bauxite Mine (SUBR) is struggling with a lot of problems at the moment, the major ones being the wages and the labor safety. The thing is, the workers’ wages have gone down by about 20% compared with May 2009. As for labor safety, the violations of the existing rules have resulted in a recent fatal accident in one of the mines,’ Chairman of UC RUSAL SUBR independent trade union Valeriy Zolotarev said to UrBC.

‘We were visited by two UC RUSAL representatives today, one of them being the HR Director. We explained everything about the problems SUBR has been faced with. At the end of the day, however, we were told that things would only get better when the aluminum market prices go up; the company representatives were unable to tell us anything more promising than this,’ Zolotarev added.