SUBR trade union got destroyed from within, chair claims

‘The legal action against Severouralsk Bauxite Mine (SUBR) hasn’t been going very smoothly so far. I am not satisfied with the professionalism of our judge, which is why I decided not to come to the hearings so as to keep the application officially unconsidered. This means I will be able to place another application and have my case handled by a different judge,’ Chairman of UC RUSAL SUBR’s independent trade union of miners Valeriy Zolotarev said to UrBC reporters.

Meanwhile, Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by Russia’s Independent Trade Union of Miners’ Liquidation Committee against Severouralsk Bauxite Mine. The plaintiff insists that the trade union membership fees paid by SUBR employees be transferred into the account of the Union’s Sverdlovsk Region division.

‘SUBR management turned down this request because the trade union is going through a liquidation process at the moment. The company’s top executives claim this means they don’t have to transfer the fees. However, there are no legal grounds for them to stop paying the fees. What is more, even during a liquidation process, we have to pay the workers who handle this very process, and the trade union can’t go into complete liquidation until we have paid all our liabilities,’ Zolotarev explained.

‘The decision to close down the union was taken by the federal managers. SUBR executives were unhappy with a strong trade union, so they decided to destroy it from within. This is why they introduced their own Chairman of Sverdlovsk Region’s division of trade union, upon which the division stopped paying the fees to the headquarters. When the Chairman had to be held accountable to the HQ, 10 million RUR turned out to be missing. Following all this, Moscow top managers decided to close down our trade union and to set up a new one, with the new management. This means SUBR management destroyed our trade union from within,’ he claims.