MAZ workers: Hundreds of thousands of people to be lose work

MAZ closedown is to trigger a chain reaction throughout the country.

A production line of one of the leading enterprises of the country, Minsk Automobile Plat (MAZ), was halted. A half a year ahead of the presidential “election” MAZ workers are made to take a leave with two thirds of their wages to be paid to them. A journalist of a Russian website meduza.io Anton Platov talked to workers of the plant and has found out what is happening there.

MAZ production line was halted in secrecy, and news about that in the media appeared just a few days before the event, and notably, workers, and not officials were talking about the decision of the senior management. Representatives of the Ministry of Industry (which is supervising MAZ on behalf of the owner, the state) simply hanged up the phone when heard questions about MAZ. The management of the plant and the marketing department, as well as auxiliary services, are still functioning. MAZ bus assembly department is still working, but it can be halded any moment as well.

Even in the end of March 2015, when the production line already stopped, and workers returned home, there was no official information on the website of the plant or in state-rum news agency BelTA. Only independent mass media informed about MAZ closedown.

The closedown of MAZ can trigger a chain reaction, as many other plants all over Belarus depend on production of trucks.

“The entire metal industry, electrotechnical industry, machinery-producing industry are in this or that way are supplyng for 2 enterprises: MAZ, the Tractor Plant, Minsk wheeled tractor Plant (MZKT) and Gomselmash,” says an engineer of Minsk Plant of Wheel Gear Syarhei Kalesnikau said. “MAZ has stopped, Tractor Plant is on the edge, they do not have a space for ready tractors which are not sold. Gomselmash has the heaviest debt in the country, its combined harvesters are not sold at all. Only MZKT is working, as they stay afloat thanks to Russian military contracts.”

As said by Kalesnikau, if not only MAZ and Minsk Tractor Plant will stop, but their related enterprises as well, hundreds of thousands are to lose their job at once. Alyaksandr Lukashenka explained why he had not been reforming the outdated enterprises exactly by the threat of high unemployment. “Structural-level reforms are needed – we are said. They hint at closing enterprises. […] We have a desire for changes in our blood. I am ready for a new model. But are you ready for these changed? Is the society ready for those great innovations, which could be offered by politicians, including me?.. We should do today what could be done, in order to save our industry and not to put people out into the street,” Lukashenka said at a press-conference in early 2015.

Many state programmes of modernization of different industries were adopted in different years in Belarus, but none of them was implemented in full measure. As a result, it happened so that not only directors were prohibited to fire people, but even people were prohibited to quit. Thus, at the plants of wood industry this ban was officially formalized by a decree of the president, which was immediately called “a decree about law of serfdom.”