Cloths Factory Workers Go On Strike

Cloths Factory Workers Go On Strike
“Slavery Must not Exist in 21st Century”

“Rise in wages, increasing of time-limit to fulfill the plan and human treatment are demanded by us,”- say Batumi Cloths Factory workers, who held protest demonstration.  Participants of preventive demonstration held in the factory yard demand human treatment, adequate wages to their labor and normal working conditions.

On 8 August in Batumi Cloths Factory full working staff expressed their concern against present governing board. “The director, seeing the whole staff in the street, did not ask what we demanded or what we wee protesting either. People, our rights are violated-wages are half diminished,  they treat us severely, and nobody wants to understand it. If we do not deserve the wages let them inform us,”-says Eter Khalvashi, worker at a factory.

Protest demonstration was result of a new director, English Michel Luka’s arrival at a factory, followed by new sanctions. “There used to be problems in the factory before but now all problems are very acute. The first thing what was done by this person was dismissal of Trade Union Chairmen from the factory; work-time-on which the worker’s salary is depended-was shortened. He has established terrible regime-if the director does not issue a pass you can not go to a nurse either. The woman needs a pass even to go to buy a hygiene packet,”- said Dodo Mekvabishvili, head of Adjara Trade Union.

The working time, what is mostly protested by the workers is proportionally connected to the wages. If time limit to fulfill the plan is long (salary is paid according to tariffication) then the tailor can fulfill the plan for 100% and gets 6GEL at the end of the day. The shortening of the working time results in to having minimum chance of getting 6GEL.

“8 hours are not enough to fulfill the plan (before they used to workfrom 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.).  We can fulfill half of the plan that means 3GEL wages a day if we are lucky that day,”-said factory worker to us.

As tailors insist, only law tariff is not the idea for the problem. They do extra work without payment. If the plan of the unit is not fulfilled the wages are cut. The workers are forced to work extra several hours. That means uncompensated labor. “We have to stay till the end of the day, but we are not paid at all. If we do not fulfill the plan we would have problems ourselves,”-said Makvala Chaghalidze to us.

Cloths factory workers who are deprived of civil rights are particularly troubled by cruel treatment. “If you are thirsty you need a permission to drink water. The break is for 45 minutes and you have to manage to have lunch, go to the toilet and drink water within the time.”

“It is impossible to work in such conditions. We are treated like slaves. We expressed our concern loudly several times, but on the next day the director put up notes in the hall like-‘keep your ideas to yourselves’. I had never been so insulted before,”-said factory worker, Anna to us.

“I asked to my colleague if we had much work till fulfilling the plan. They did not even give me a rebuke on the case and fired me. They neither asked what I had asked her,”-says former worker Medea Nataridze.

“I felt bad, I was so bad that workers hold me by hands but they could not take me to a doctor before having received a pass from the director,”-said Tsira Makharadze to us. The cloth factory administration has not responded on accuses. “We have right not to respond,”-officially declared financial director of the factory, Dato Djincharadze to us. While he added unofficially: “The demonstration participants do not know what they want.” Finally he was bored at giving explanations to us and got rid of us saying ‘go to hell…”

With the help of Adjara Trade Union factory workers formed a group of ten men holding negotiations with the administration. They demand to satisfy their demands. Otherwise, factory workers threat to go on a strike in three days again.

Maka Malakmadze, Batumi