Processing plant workers on trial

From a news release by the Coordination Council of Workers’ Movement of Ukraine (KSRD) published in the newspaper “Workers Action” in September.

A trial aimed at repressing job actions by the workers at a private processing plant in the city of Krasny Luch of the Lugansk region, Ukraine, will reopen on Oct. 9. The workers ask for letters of solidarity and that people and organizations send protests of the trial to the Ukranian authorities.

From July 2-18, these workers were on strike demanding the back pay owed them for some past months as well as for 2008. A majority of the workers were women. They had founded a strike committee and an independent trade union and under their leadership even blocked the railway leading to the plant.

The result of this strike and the blockade was pay out of their wages for March and partly April 2009. And all participants in the strike who were dismissed before by the management were employed again in their former positions.

However, after that the local authorities together with the plant management started to take revenge on the strikers by resuming the offensive. The proprietors decided to get rid of the organizers of the protest by any means available and to stop any attempt of the workers to struggle for their rights in the future. They instituted legal proceedings against the organizers of the strike, demanded that the courts call the workers’ struggle “illegal” and punish the workers.

The trial against the activists began July 28 and will continue Oct. 9. Those charged with crimes include the leaders of the strike committee and the union leadership of the plant, Anatoli Moskaljov and Anna Antroptschenko.

The KSRD emphatically protests against this repression and demands the end to any legal and criminal prosecution of the workers’ activists of the enriching plant “Yanovskaya”!

The KSRD asks readers to send letters of protest to the following addresses:

1. High Court of the Ukraine
ul. P. Orlika 4
Kiev, Ukraine, 01024;
e-mail: [email protected]

2. Chief Public Prosecutor of the Ukraine
ul. Riynitskaza 13/15
Kiev, Ukraine, 01001

3. State Regional Administration of the District Lugansk
Pl. Geroev VOV 3
Lugansk, Ukraine, 91016;
e-mail: [email protected]

Send solidarity messages to: [email protected]