GM Workers Strike Over Salaries, Vacation

GM’s local plant is currently facing labor union action as workers demand changes to the terms of their employment.

The employees of General Motors’ St. Petersburg plant went on strike last week, with more than half of the plant’s 120 workers from the welding department participating in a “go slow,” said the leader of the plant’s labor union, Yevgeny Ivanov.

The employees are performing their jobs “slowly and maintaining quality standards,” causing the plant’s daily output of cars to decrease by 30 percent, he said. The union committee has proposed replacing yearly bonuses with a guarantee that wages will be raised annually by 8 percent plus inflation.

The workers are also requesting they be allowed to choose the timing of two weeks of their vacation instead of just one — this year the plant closed down for a mandatory three-week corporate vacation, and employees were left with only one week of flexible vacation time. These demands were presented to the plant’s management about a month ago but have received no response, said Ivanov.

Meanwhile, GM’s public affairs director for the CIS, Sergey Lepnukhov, said that the factory’s management has not noticed any employees engaging in coordinated activities. According to Lepnukhov, oscillations in output are possible as the plant prepares to release a new model — the Opel Astra. The plant’s administration is keeping dialogue open with the labor union, as well as with individual workers, but has not yet made a decision about modifying working conditions, he said.

Ivanov denied that the decrease in production was related to the release of the Astra model.

GM opened the plant last year, after investing a total of about $300 million. The factory produces up to 70,000 cars per year, including the Chevrolet Captiva, Cruze, and Opel Antara models. Employees in the production department earn an average salary of about 25,000 rubles ($867) a month. One hundred employees out of the plant’s 650 workers are members of the labor union, Ivanov said.

The Ford plant in Vsevolozhsk was the first carmaker to encounter a “go-slow” strike. A source familiar with the plant noted that even without strikes, plants are periodically forced to halt production due to the sharp fall in demand this year.

GM is in a difficult situation — it will not be easy to find resources to meet the workers’ demands, said Anna Ustiants, Northwest regional manager of Kelly Services. The plant’s salaries are quite competitive, and there are enough candidates on the labor market to replace dissatisfied employees, she said. There are twice as many qualified candidates as there are job openings at automotive plants, confirmed Yulia Sakharova, director of the St. Petersburg branch of HeadHunter.