Another Assault on Alexei Etmanov

Last night (November 13) another assault was made on Alexei Etmanov, the leader of the trade union at the Ford-Vsevolozhsk plant outside of Petersburg. An unidentified man was waiting for Etmanov with a metal club in the entryway of his building. Alexei and his wife miraculously escaped harm.

Alexei Etmanov is known for his work as the leader and chair of the of the union at the Ford plant in Vsevolozhsk, Leningrad Oblast, which has won fame for its successful strikes. Etmanov is also the co-chair of the Russian Interregional Trade Union of Autoworkers (ITUA), which represents workers at auto plants and related production facilities in Moscow, Kaluga, Taganrog, Yaroslavl, Leningrad Oblast, and other regions.

Alexei is an active member of the Petersburg-based Committee for Solidarity Actions (KSD), which unites trade union and leftist political activists and is the organizer of the support campaign for the workers union at the TaGAZ plant, which is affiliated with the ITUA. The attacks on Etmanov could be linked to his work on this campaign. The ITUA has demanded recognition of the trade union at TaGAZ, the reinstatement of union committee chair Sergei Pinchukov and other members of the organization who were illegally dismissed, and the investigation of the three attacks, this past summer, on activists Alexei Gramm and Sergei Bryzgalov, who were likewise ambushed by persons unknown after they got off work.

We should remind our readers that this was not the first attack on Etmanov: on the night of November 8, three unidentified men attacked him as he made his way from a parking lot to his home. Although the bandits were armed with brass knuckles, during the struggle Alexei managed to pull out his stun pistol: the shot he fired frightened his attackers, and they ran away. The following day, Etmanov’s deputy chair, Vladimir Lesik, received an anonymous phone call. “You got a mild scolding. If you keep making trouble for us, you’ll pay with your life,” said the caller. We have just learned that other members of the KSD got similar calls.

The unions will press for a swift and complete investigation of these incidents.

Russian union leaders attacked

IMF calls for an immediate and transparent investigation into the recent assaults and threats against ITUA leaders and activists.

RUSSIA: Alarming news was received from the Russian Interregional Trade Union of Autoworkers (ITUA), an affiliate of the International Metalworkers Federation regarding a recent attack against Alexey Etmanov, ITUA co-chairman and chairman of the ITUA primary organization at Ford enterprise in Vsevolozhsk.

 

Etmanov was assaulted on the evening of November 8 when he returned home from the second shift at the Ford plant. He parked his car and was walking in the direction of his home. On the street, three assailants armed with brass knuckles ran towards Etmanov and without a word assaulted him.

During the scuffle Etmanov managed to remove his rubber bullet gun and made a shot. The assailants escaped. Originally, Etmanov believed these were ordinary robbers. However the next day the deputy chairman of Etmanov, Vladimir Lesik, received a call on his mobile phone and was alerted that the night incident had no relation to a robbery or a plunder. “You were softly scolded. But if you continue to create obstacles for us, we will take away your life”, threatened the anonymous caller.

Earlier, on June 24 and July 26, Alexei Gramm and Sergei Bryzgalov, activists of the ITUA primary organization at Taganrog enterprise OAO  “TagAZ” producing Hyundai cars, also became victims of  assault after their participation in a picket at the entrance of the enterprise. Gramm and Bryzgalov were trying to get  information about wages and compensations as well as demanding  management to recognize their union.

In a statement regarding the assaults, IMF General Secretary Marcello Malentacchi warned of IMF’s grave concern over “the authorities’ indifference to violations of fundamental human and labour rights and the failure to act promptly and effectively to ensure these rights are fully upheld and protected” and demanded “an immediate, unbiased and transparent investigation into the facts of attacks against trade union leaders Alexei Etmanov, Alexei Gramm and Sergei Bryzgalov, as well as the death threats made to Vladimir Lesik.”

Click here to read the full text of the statement.

IMF is urging affiliates to send letters calling for an immediate and transparent investigation into these attacks to:

Mr. Yuriy Chaika 
General Public Prosecutor of Russian Federation
125993, Moscow, GSP-3, 15a B. Dimitrovka str. RUSSIA
Fax: +7 (495) 692-96-00  

Mr. Sergey Romanyuk 
Public Prosecutor of Leningrad region 
194044, Saint Petersburg, 
av. Lesnoi, str. 20, kor. 12
RUSSIA
Fax: +7 812 542 00 15

Mr. Valeriy Kuznetsov
Public Prosecutor of Rostov region
344082, Rostov region
Rostov-na-Donu, per. Bratskiy, 11
RUSSIA
Fax: +7 863 262-45-25

Ms. Tatiana A. Golikova
Minister of Health Care and Social Development
127994, GSP-4, Moscow, per. Rahmanovskiy, 3
RUSSIA
Fax: +7 495 628 09 48  

To send solidarity support letters to the ITUA, email: profkom@ford-profsoyuz.ru

Knuckledusters as an Instrument of “Social Dialogue” in Contemporary Russia

Who Is Bothered by Alexei Etmanov? 

Reprisals against union leaders have, unfortunately, ceased to be merely a part of the ancient history of the trade union movement. They have more and more often become a reality of labor relations in today’s Russia.

On the night of November 8, when Alexei Etmanov, chair of the union committee at Ford-Vsevolozhsk and co-chair of the Russian Interregional Trade Union of Autoworkers (ITUA), returned home after his shift, he was attacked by three armed bandits. It is clear that the people who sent them wanted to ensure numerical superiority. Here, however, their calculations ran afoul: Alexei managed to force his attackers, who were armed with knuckledusters, to retreat in shame.

However, in order to dispel any doubts as to the motives for the attack, the “organizers” of this piece of brigandage telephoned another union leader at Ford, Vladimir Lesnik, and threatened reprisals if the Ford unionists “didn’t stop getting in [their] way.”

Over the past two years such attacks have happened more than once: labor activists have been savagely beaten in Kaliningrad, Togliatti, and Taganrog. Each time the targets were union activists who challenged the complete sway of their employers and thus all employers who recognize no one’s rights other than their own sovereign right to dictate the work conditions and the lives of “their” workers.

Each time the reprisals followed a heightening of conflict at the respective factories. Despite the fact that police investigators have still not managed to solve any of these crimes, there can hardly be any doubt as to the names of the people who really commissioned them since it is much too obvious whose interests were threatened.

In this case everything is more complicated. The attack on Alexei Etmanov, leader of the Ford workers and an iconic figure for the reborn labor movement and independent trade unions in Russia, happened a year after the last, widely publicized strike at the plant, at a time when passions had cooled and the union was preparing for what has become an ordinary affair—negotiations over the next collective bargaining agreement. But, lo and behold, it turns out that the Ford union has interfered with someone’s plans to such an extent that the enemies of the workers are prepared to commit crimes. They openly announce that they won’t stop at anything in order to “remove the question” of the free labor and trade union movement from the agenda.

The attack on Etmanov is, without a doubt, a challenge. It is a challenge to all the healthy forces that have dared to raise their voices in defense of the interests of workers in today’s Russia. This challenged has been thrown down by those find inimical the very idea that hired workers have a right to self-organization, a say in their own working lives, a right to negotiations and equal dialogue with their employers. Their name is legion. It is not important who, in this case, gave the ignoble orders or the number of the telephone in Vsevolozhsk, Taganrog, Togliatti, Petersburg or Moscow from which the scum got the call. We know whom the free trade unions bother. And we can answer their challenge by closing our ranks and demonstrating general solidarity. For today the bell tolls not only for Etmanov and Ford, but for us all.

Let us prepare ourselves for the battle!

—A. Lyapin, Union Activist

The Fight Is Effective When the Fighters Know How to Defend Themselves

 

On the night of November 8, Alexei Etmanov, the chair of the trade union committee at the Ford-Vsevolozhsk plant, returned home from the second shift. He parked his car in a lot and headed for his house. On Heroes Street three men jumped in his path and without uttering a word attacked Alexei. They were armed with knuckledusters.

During the tussle, Alexei managed to pull a stun weapon from his pocket and get off a shot. The cloak-and-dagger types beat a hot retreat.

Etmanov told a police investigator that in his opinion the assailants were ordinary “yobs.” However, he turned out to be wrong.

The following day, Etmanov’s deputy, Vladimir Lesik got a call on his mobile phone. The caller warned him that the nighttime incident had nothing to do with robbery or mugging.

“You got a mild chewing-out. But if you keep getting in our way, you’ll part with your life,” the anonymous caller declared.

The combative trade union at Ford-Vsevolozhsk gets in a lot of people’s way—both employers and dealers. And, by establishing the Russian Interregional Trade Union of Autoworkers (ITUA), the young workers of Vsevolozhsk have also gotten in the way of employers in Taganrog and Togliatti, as well as those trade union organizations that the authorities use like an “engine whistle” to let off the steam of popular rage.

It is a matter for the police to find out which of these forces attacked a labor leader with knuckledusters.

For our part, we would like to remind our sons of Lenin’s statement that a revolution is worth its salt only when it knows how to defend itself.

Trade union activists are in the process of preparing an appeal to the police to open a criminal investigation.

From the editors:

This is not the first time that labor activists have been attacked in Russia. We have written many times that the bosses are trying to intimidate workers and crush the seedlings of the evolving class struggle. Threats and violence against labor movement activists have become an ordinary affair in our country. In this situation, all communist and labor organizations should band together and oppose the terror of discrete members of the bourgeoisie with class solidarity. All incidents of such pressure on workers should be as widely reported as possible, and the protest campaign against the current practice of conflict resolution should be as noisy as possible.

Along with the Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast Committee for Solidarity Actions (KSD), as well as socialist and trade union organizations, the Marxist Group Workers Action (MGRD) has begun a campaign of protest against the actions of the administration of the Taganrog Auto Plant (TagAZ), whose [unrecognized union] is affiliated with the ITUA that Alexei Etmanov co-chairs. (It cannot be ruled out that the attack on Etmanov and the attacks on and threats made to union leaders at TagAZ are links in the same chain.) We call on all socialist and labor activists to join in our campaign—to distribute information about the illegal actions of employers, participate in pickets planned both for Petersburg and other cities, to send protest letters to the e-mail addresses of the bosses, and so forth. You can find updates on our campaign on our website. If you are able to help us in any way, please write to us at: red@marksizm.info