Rally in Minsk: Where's my $1000?

Participants in rally for a decent work demand a new economic policy.

The resolution adopted by activists of independent Trade Unions - participants of the rally of October 7 in Minsk park of People's Friendship - involve such requirements, BelaPAN reports.

New economic course, according to activists of Trade Unions, must "promote labour, new job places, modernization, significant salary increase, secure working conditions."

They also stated that they stood "consistently and steadily" for the right to a decent work "in all the aspects". They noted that the authorities did not provide "fundamental principles and norms of decent work elaborated by the International Labour Organization", in particular, "already extremely low wages consistently reduce, leaving many thousands of workers and their families behind the poverty".

There is a problem of a part-time employment and increasing unemployment, but the authorities "find it necessary neither to recognize the problem, nor to take measures on new job places."

"Amid practical inactivity of the authorities, critical conditions, which make hundreds of thousands of workers endanger their safety and health, remain," the document says.

Presidential Decrees No. 29 on obligatory fixed-term labour contracts, No. 9, restricting workers of woodwork and timber industry to quit until the end of the modernization, No. 5, imposing an additional responsibility on employees and employers, No. 3 that in fact returned responsibility for parasitism has become a serious problem on the way of labour improvements, professional activists believe.

"We insist on their immediate repeal, they insult human dignity of a worker and make decent working conditions impossible," the resolution's authors stress.

The rally devoted to the World Day for Decent Work, usually celebrated on October 7, was organized the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions (BCDTU). About 70 Minsk and regional activists - members of the BCDTU, Free Belarusian Trade Union, Free Trade Union of Steel Workers and Union of Radio-electronic Industry Workers - took part in it.