Russian Union takes on Ford

Received from Eric Lee/LabourStart this morning

Russia: Union takes on Ford - calls for help

Workers assembling the Ford Focus at a plant near St. Petersburg have been on strike since 20 November -- a rare event in a country where most strikes are of very limited duration. They are demanding that Ford negotiate their wages and conditions, but Ford is refusing to do so. Instead they've reacted by escalating the conflict, leading to the injury of one worker by police. Ford does recognize unions in many countries -- probably in your country -- so it's especially important to put pressure on the global management of the company. The same rights to trade union representation that are enjoyed by Ford workers in the USA, Canada, Britain and elsewhere should be enjoyed by the workers in St. Petersburg.

Click here to send on your message to Ford -- and please forward this email message on to your fellow union members!

Why the problem with unions now? Don't they know their own history?

Western--specificalyy US--firms have "developed" in the last year.

In this case, I have no way of knowing. But I've heard about US companies that suddenly developed irregularities in their permits, worker-relation problems, finding that where they were based had actually been owned by somebody else, that they fell under some obscure tax law, or simply "the way *we* do business isn't the way *you* have to do business." Etc.

Coincindentally, there's usually been a Putin-supported (or Putin-supporter-supported) company just ready to step in with their version of the product, if not step into their manufacturing facilities. In some cases the "problem" developed just days or weeks after some transgression by the company--or, in the case of prominent companies, by the US government against the Edinyi, Vernyi Putin. (A poor pun on Stalin's Edinyi, vernyi put' ... the One True Path, lic. "to communism".)

I was there in '95, and they were happening under Yeltsin. If it wasn't the government doing it, it was the mafia. Hard place to do business.

A strike like this sounds like something else, though.