Georgian Railway Might Stop Tomorrow

Tomorrow, on October 24, passenger and freight trains of the Georgian Railway will not travel and railway system will temporarily stop working.
 
Workers of the railway department, who are on strike, intend to use this extreme form of protest unless the administration satisfies their requests. They request increase of salaries, improved working conditions, regulation of reimbursement of extra working hours and bonuses as well as re-employment of the workers, who were sacked because they had cooperated with trade unions. Almost every employee of the Tbilisi DEPO and Samtredia Railway Department intend to go on strike tomorrow.

Representative of the Railway Trade Union Vitali Giorgadze said the strike will start at 11:00 am and will supposedly last 2 hours. However, it might acquire larger scales and railway system might stop for longer time.

Vitali Giorgadze said the railway workers throughout Georgia might join their protest.

Negotiations between strikers and administration members are unsuccessful so far. Final round of negotiations will start at 5:00 pm in the building of railway administration where organizing group of strikers and trade union members will meet administration members. If they reach agreement, the protest will be cancelled.

Giorgadze said they consulted about stopping passenger trains but it will be impossible to stop only freight trains so they decided to stop passenger trains too.

Employees have been requesting the railway administration to satisfy their requests for several days already. Students union Laboratory 1918 spread information about railway workers’ strike. Soon railway employees from Samtredia also joined their colleagues from Tbilisi.

News.ge