Social tension in working environment will only grow, one of the heads of the working group on preparation for the workers’ national council Alyaksandr Bukhvostau said.
"A lot of will depend on the measures that government will take to prevent a social outbreak," he said.
"The trade union of workers of radio electronic industry has recently conducted a poll among the workers. We are summing up the results. All workers notice reduce in wages by 25–50%. Even big enterprises work two or three days a week; giants send their workers to construction and agricultural works,"Alyaksandr Bukhvostau told in an interview to Telegraf.
In his view, "an objective of the official trade unions now is to prevent unrests.""Official trade union will persuade workers to be patient. But if the workers are patient, the authorities won’t do anything. The authorities should either demonstrate their competence, or resign, giving place for new power able to solve problems," the politician thinks.
Alyaksandr Bukhvostau noted that the workers’ national council may be not just a one-time action. "Workers can gather and say: let’s create a working committee to coordinate the activity of workers’ organizations. Workers can say they want to solve their problems by means of workers’ committee," he supposed.
The politician doesn’t exclude that a strike committee may be organized. "But it must be a decision of the workers," Alyaksandr Bukhvostau stressed.
We remind that many Belarusian enterprises have found themselves on the verge of bankruptcy: plants and factories work short weeks, salaries are reducing, bonuses and additional payments are cut, workers are being laid off. Information about serious economic problems on enterprises comes from regions almost every day.
As of June 2009, about 200,000 people worked short weeks or had to go on holidays.
