This story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.net/en/.
   License: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/
   international.
   --------------------------------------------------------------


Strike, exile, arrest: what happened to Belarusian workers?
By:   []
Date: None

According to the company itself, 120 employees did not start work on 17 August, and 671 employees did not start work on 18 August.

Karlyuk says this figure is close to the truth. The company administration did not threaten striking workers, he said, but “exerted pressure”.

“They said that if we wanted to go on strike, we had to work our shifts and then go to the square to express our opinions. ‘But don’t stop the company, you don’t need to mix work and civic life,’ they said.”

The strike lasted two days. Production of potash fertilisers was halted, and several workshops and mines stopped working. According to Karlyuk, the workers went down to the mines only to preserve the equipment “so that later it would be easier to start production”.

During the strike, the general director of Belaruskali met with the heads of the mining brigades and section heads. He promised that if work resumes there would be no sanctions against workers, and everyone would receive their salaries on time. On the night of 18-19 August, people began returning to work.

“Of the 670 people, most of them had already gone back to work. Therefore, it is difficult to say that the strike took place,” Karlyuk said. “After that, there was just a core left, headed by Anatoly Bokun. The rest just went to work: ‘You understand, I have a family, loans.’ Therefore, of those people who signed up for the strike, there were probably 20 left in the strike committee.”

Strike gains momentum

Karlyuk says that the workers continued to join the movement after that, but not en masse – usually only one at a time. But after 25 October, when Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya announced a nationwide strike, “the strike began to grow.”

“I would call it the second wave. From 25 October to December, the strike increased to 100 people, I guess.” Around 60 people joined the strike in a month and a half, he calculated.

Karlyuk himself joined the strike along with a friend on 2 November.

“I just understood that there was no other way. If we didn’t go out then, did not continue to seek our rights, then later we would simply be deprived of any right at all.”

Karlyuk went on vacation and on 13 November accompanied other members of the strike committee to the city of Kosava on an excursion organised by the strike committee. About 40 people were then detained. Karlyuk, along with other detainees, was held in the city of Ivatsevichi until midnight, and then transported to the detention center in Baranovichi. The Baranovichi court sentenced him to a fine of £60 for participating in a mass event.

Karlyuk was fired immediately after the vacation. According to his calculations, since August 2020, Belaruskali has fired 120-130 people for political reasons.

After his dismissal, Karlyuk stayed in Belarus and is now beguna new profession.

“To go on strike, then to get a public sector job again... this, I think, is not very correct,” he says. “I’m studying at the moment, trying to apply myself in another area – woodworking.”

Pavel Magidov, Belarusian Metallurgical Plant

Pavel Magidov, 39, moved from Russia’s Bryansk region to Gomel, Belarus in 1998. In 2001, after graduating in metallurgy, he moved to Zhlobin and began working as a steel caster at the Belarusian Metallurgical Plant. In his spare time, since 2005, Magidov has been engaged in “various forms” of business.

“So [working at the factory] was kind of like a hobby for me. The kind of job I can’t quit,” he says.

In Belarus, Magidov first married a Russian woman. They had a son before getting divorced, and then he married a Belarusian woman, with whom he had a daughter.

Prior to 2020, Magidov says, he was not interested in politics.

“In any case, I think there are few adult men who aren’t interested in politics at least somehow,” he clarifies. “Someone would talk at home in the kitchen, someone at work, and someone would go out to protest. I wasn’t that active there. I found other things more interesting. I always considered the word ‘politics’ dirty, a swear word, to be honest.”

Magidov says that if “he lived well under any government, it would be a sin to complain.” For him, “it all began” with the 2020 presidential election campaign. At that time, he says he was watching online videos by blogger and presidential candidate Siarhei Tsikhanouski, which often showed how the police cut short his attempts at organising public gatherings and collecting signatures in support of his candidacy.

“I have eyes. They are given to each person not only to look but also to see. I did not like everything that was going on, of course,” he says.

“Alternative candidates on criminal charges... nobody expected that ordinary people would say something. I mean the authorities. And those people who call themselves leaders – whether in opposition or not – nobody expected that people in the swamp that Belarus has become over the past 10-15 years were capable of this.”

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/strike-exile-arrest-what-happened-belarusian-workers/