Belarusian Railway's employees leaving for Russia in droves

The company has no money to pay salaries.

Train drivers from the Baranavichy depot shared new details of the catastrophic situation at Belarusian Railway company, Radio Svaboda reports.

“They often delay salaries and holiday pay. I am on holiday now, but I don't have my holiday pay. I appealed the management of the company's Baranavichy department, but they say the money is spent on the Ice Hockey World Championship,” an employee of Belarusian Railway says.

Minsk suffers from the deficit of locomotive crews, especially train drivers. Train operators began to leave for Russia after the devaluation in 2011, when their salaries were reduced by half.

“They mostly go to Russia. People from Orsha go to Smolensk (they can work on rotation there). People from Minsk go to Siberia, Moscow, St Petersburg. The company tries not to hand in train driving licenses to train engineers preferring to keep them at the personnel department so that Russian employers cannot hire them. But train drivers use bypasses,” a train driver's assistant from Minsk says.

He stresses that the remaining locomotive crews have much work due to the outflow of staff to Russia.

“Many people don't want to work for this money. It is convenient for managers to make people work extra 20-15 hours a month. It's more profitable to pay for overtime than to pay the normal rate. If people work extra hours, they do not receive additional pay for the skill level and length of employment,” the train driver's assistant explains.

A reader of charter97.org reported about problems at Belarusian Railway company some days ago. He informed about salary cuts and introducing a four-day working week.

“I cannot keep silence any more! We have to work four days a week since October. They also cut the salary by 1 million. I earned 5 million, so I will get only 4 million! We recently saw an order from the chief economist of the company saying that our salaries will be reduced by 10%,” he wrote.

A skilled train driver can earn maximum 1,000 dollars in Belarus. He can receive from 2,000 to 3,000 dollars in Russia for the same work. Railway workers say if salaries are cut by 10%, mass quits will be inevitable.