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á×ÇÕÓÔ 2002 ÇÏÄÁ |  |
The alternative to the socialism is a barbarity, that's what today's proletarian daily feels on his own back. Especially if he is a gastarbeiter, works in Moscow and has no registration card. Don't you believe? Then welcome to work in the capital. The large Moscow building joint-stock company "DON-STROY" (its other name is "State (sic!) Enterprise, Construction and Asembly Department N1") makes an unique offer to its workers!
So, you have decided to get out to Moscow to earn some money. OK, for the beginning you should address to a firm - recruiter or maybe to two of them: in your native land and in Moscow. You will pay them a round sum and they, having promised you gold mountains, will send you to the employer. The employer also will pay for you to the recruiter. Well, congratulations, you have been sold. However, you may come directly to the building site. Anyway, you are at the "DON-STROY" unit.
Speaking more precisely, you are in front of the unit because all building territory is fenced with barbed wire. The entrance to the territory is allowed only on a pass. Externally all this strongly looks like a prison zone. Later you will understand that it's not only externally: you will learn that you can leave the territory only for a lunch break from 13.00 to 14.00 and after 20.00, any other time the guards won't let you out, you will see patrols of security guards going along the building site, entering your room of resort without knock, rummaging in your belongings, before your eyes they will beat up your comrade saying he is drunk, only because he scowled at his boss. But all this will happen much later. For the moment you are waiting for your work superintendent shivering with cold in front of the gate together with the other unemployed.
The work superintendent will lead you into the "office" (a room of office type located in a carriage) where after a short interview whose aim is to find out your name and the place of registration (God forbid if you are a muscovite!), you will be offered to sign the labour contract. The work superintendent will demand to sign it immediately, nevertheless try to read it. It's a very amusing document! "11-hour working day is established, from 8.00 to 20-00." - the item 3.1 reads, for example. And here again, in the item 3.2: "The Employee can be involved in overtime works in accordance with the procedure prescribed by the labour legislation". Notice, overtime work is a work over an 11-hour working day. What it means, you will understand later when you will be forced to work for 20 hours a day, and the rest of time you will sleep directly on your work-place, and when in response to your discontent you will be beaten by the guards on the order of bosses as it happened with brick-layers who worked at the unit on Mosfilmovskaya street. But all this will happen later, and now let's return to the contract.
The most curious item is the second, "payment":
"2.1. The wages are calculated according to the fulfilled volume of work.
2.2. The wages are paid not later than on day 30 of each month following the month in which it was charged". Did you understand? You are honestly warned that you will receive your first wage only when you will have worked 2 months, and they will pay you for only one month. As to volumes, it is simple too: nobody is going to pay standing idle, though it were through employer's fault. And now, just look at following items:
"1.7. If the contract is cancelled, the wages are not paid for the previous month.
1.8. If the contract is cancelled during a trial period, the wages for the fulfilled period are not paid." It means that if it's you who terminates the contract which was concluded, for example, for 11 months (in 90 % cases it's the worker who terminates the contract), you willy-nilly give the employer your monthly wage. And if you worked for only several months, they can pay you nothing at all as the trial period is established by your heads. One thing more, don't you dare blab out how much they promised to pay you, because the item. 1.3 clearly reads: "The Employee takes the pledge... not to divulge the wages specified earlier with the Administration", and "non-observance by the Employee of provisions of the given contract entails immediate dismissal of the Employee". Why do they need such secrecy? But it's so simple! They told you one kind of lies, to your neighbour - another, and those who have worked here for a long time, know the whole truth. Can they allow the workers to be frank among themselves?!
If one decided to draw up a contract completely contradicting the Labour Code, he would get something in this spirit. Certainly, the management of the DON-STROY perfectly knows the true price of the given paper. It isn't by accident that the form of the contract doesn't contain not only requisites of the company, even the name of the company isn't mentioned, and the employer is called simply "administration". For additional guarantees the copy of the contract isn't given to the worker. As you see, the bourgeois foresaw everything: even if some very courageous worker brings an action against the DON-STROY, the company will simply deny the fact of the conclusion of the contract. And especially persistent workers will be beaten up by the "gangsters of Bogoslovsky" (the workers call so the company's guards)".
Well, you understand now that by signing the contract you give yourself to voluntary slavery, but you need to eat something, to live somewhere, you haven't money for the way back home already, and, at last, all the same you hope to earn something... You put your signature under the contract... Now you really got... into the DON-STROY... Your first working day will begin tomorrow, and today you will receive food coupons, wait for the bus which the firm has kindly given to the workers, and, with the order for lodging in your hands, you will go to the hostel...
Evening, 8 o'clock. Some 100 meters from the unit there is already a crowd of workers who jump aside with fear from passing by militia's cars. You are among them too. You are waiting for the bus to the hostel. You are waiting for a long time, about half an hour, maybe longer. Near you there are "enterprising" "employees of the law and order". They are earning their living: extort money from new comers under pretext of check of registration. And take away documents of those who don't pay. Some of them are taken to the militia station. You will have time to learn that even presence of registration card doesn't save from militian extortion. The militia's officer easily can doubt of its authenticity and in this occasion confiscate your passport, or he simply can throw away your registration card, take you to the militia station and there rummage around your pockets. And if the cops like any woman, they take them away, nobody knows where. Women usually come back 2-3 days later. But so far the cops go away and you continue to wait. The approached bus opens one door. The driver gets out of the cabin with a hammer. Wildly cursing, he rushes into the crowd, delivering blows to those who hasten to enter too much. The driver can be understood, he protects his bus and... your lives. Really, the bus is designed for transportation of 150 passengers maximum, but takes up to 500. In total there is 2, less often 3 buses, meanwhile, on the average more than one and a half thousand persons work at the unit. Certainly, there aren't places for everybody, so the crowd of workers, pressing each other, sweeping away everything on their way, breaks inside. Sure, everyone is afraid to remain outside and fall prey to cops. Of course, one can go independently provided that he has money for municipal transportation, besides, there is risk to come into the hands of the same cops.
At last, everybody who could squeeze into, did it. The doors of the bus are hardly closed. The bus began to move and... stopped. What happened? Just usual thing, you were stopped by militia. All or nearly all workers are unloaded from the bus, a part of cops comes inside, a part remains in the street. They start to check documents, sorting you into three groups: Russians, foreigners, Asians and Caucasians. After having sorted, they will choose 10 persons (most likely from the last group, but sometimes from others) and take them away. The others again will get in the bus and go. Does this happen frequently? At the end of the month before the wages - very frequently. But how do they learn when the wages are paid if even workers often don't know it? Most likely, from someone from DON-stroy management or maybe from the guards.
Well, at last all dangers and all cops are behind. The bus approached the hostel. Most likely, you will be lodged in one of hostels in Strogino or in Shchukinskaya. There is also a hotel "Altai", but you will hardly get there. It is for the elite. So, passing the check-point into the courtyard and the check-point in the hostel, after a simple procedure of lodging, you will get in the room. 11 persons live there, besides you. In the room of approximately 3o4 meters there are 6 two-story beds, 6 bedside-tables and a case. There are about 50 such rooms on the floor. At the end of a long corridor there is shower-bath and lavatory (fortunately, separate - for men and for women, which cannot be told about rooms). Almost always in the evening there is only cold water in the shower-bath. On the ground floor there is a dining room. Here, under coupons (which cost about 2000 roubles (70 USD) per one month - it is subtracted from your wage) all the month you will eat macaroni with "cutlet" ("cutlet" is rice mixed up with something smelling as meat), and drink slops called "tea". Of course, you have right not to take coupons. If you have money for food and time to prepare meal - there is a kitchen on the floor.
The regime in the hostel is striking. The entrance and the EXIT (!) from the hostel are allowed strictly on a pass. If you want to get from one floor to another, you also need a pass(!). Add to this unsteady plank-beds in the room, disgusting slops in the dining room, 11 hours (in reality more) of wearisome work, cold water in the shower-bath, retreat at 11 o'clock in the evening after which you can leave the room only to the lavatory. Doesn't it remind places of imprisonment? It is amusing that it is forbidden to smoke in the hostel. If you want to smoke very much - go to the street, and after the retreat - put up with it. For smoking in the hostel - eviction, for the use of alcoholic drinks - eviction, if the manager on duty did not like your physiognomy - the same measure. In week-day in working hours you cannot be in the hostel without an illness certificate or a service record from the work superintendent who released you from work. What is more, any time they can force you to work for the benefit of your dear hostel, say, to remove rubbish or to clean the territory. If you refuse - you will be evicted. One cannot leave the hostel for more than a day without permission of the manager, otherwise - again you will be evicted. To crown all troubles, militia's round-ups are frequently carried out in the hostel.
Well, do you like it? However, you are a lucky beggar. Many workers live not in hostels but directly at the unit, in rooms of resort where no sanitary norms are observed, and in the winter the temperature seldom rises above 0. They sleep in a row, using old clothes as a bed.
At 5 o'clock in the morning you will be awaken by the alarm clock. You will stand up, will make a huge line first to the shower-bath, then to the bowl, then, in the dining room, you will swallow your portion of slops and at half past six you will go to the bus. In the same crush as yesterday, you will reach your work, in the same crush you will enter the territory and will go to work. It's all the same what you will be: brick-layer, handyman or decorator. Any work is equally heavy and dangerous here. Only at "Triumph Palace" for two weeks of last December, there were 5 death cases. The brick-layers fell. They fell because all norms of safety are broken at the unit. Helmets and protective belts were put on corpses already. Because the deputy chief on bricklaying S.V. Zinukov sure didn't want to be responsible for lives of people. And some workers fell because they slept in motion. In December the brick-layers worked for almost 24 hours a day. They were promised at the end of the month the wage of 30 thousand roubles if they would finish the laying in time. And, at cost of life of their comrades, they handed over the laying. Do you think they received their wages? Yes, 2-5 thousand roubles (70-160 USD) for one and a half - two month! Such things are a rule in the DON-STROY. And there are workers who weren't promised big money. They are simply forced to work, threatened with dismissal. Many of them would be glad to leave, but they haven't money to go home. Some of them, certainly, try to protest. Usually it finishes with beating of those who are dissatisfied. Get used, you will work like this too. You will be leaved "to work in night shifts" too - it's 36 hours of work. You will fall asleep in a cold room of resort in your lunch break too. You will get ill, but the DON-STROY doesn't give sick-lists! Maximum - an illness certificate for three days. Like everybody, you will reel on the slippery floor at the height of 20 floors, risking to fall. No, you won't be afraid, you will be so tired that you won't care anymore...
It's awful... But the worst is still to come. The real nightmare will begin when after two months of hard work instead of the wage you receive mere copecks - in total about 5 thousand (160 USD), and that'll be good because you easily could get nothing. To crown all your troubles, you will be stopped by a cop who will take away even this money. Tired, hungry and ill, you won't be able to work further any more, but you will have nothing to come back home. You will send your last money to your family in order that they may not die with famine. And you will be compelled to remain at the DON-STROY and to work, understanding that all the same they won't pay you, but hoping to collect money at least for the ticket home...
Well, did you like this prospect? This happens with the majority, this will happen with you too. But what is to be done? - you will ask. To hang yourself.
And if you are not a cattle going to slaughter-house but a human being, then - you must fight! Fight for your life and lives of your family! Fight for the dignity and for the right to be a human being!
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