Workers who perform poorly during the harvest campaign will be sent to the army
- 6 hours ago
- 3 min read
Lukashenka has decided to use the army as a tool of punishment for failures in agriculture. After instructing the authorities to send “negligent” participants in the harvest campaign to serve as ordinary soldiers on the southern border, Defence Minister Viktar Khrenin reported on how his ministry intended to carry out the order. Siarhei Antusevich, Deputy Chair of the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions (BKDP), described the initiative as absurd.
The Defence Minister managed to shift the focus from full military service to reserve training, which would at least create fewer problems when dealing with people whom the authorities now appear to intend to punish with military duties for alleged failures at work. Those failures will apparently be determined by military recruitment officers, who have been instructed to travel directly “to the fields” and work alongside local officials.
“As for those who have no intention of working at all, we will call them up for military training, where we will improve their combat preparedness, as the President has demanded,” Khrenin said.
The minister did not explain who would harvest the crops while those workers were away, despite the current labour shortage. That, however, is apparently not his concern: when the order is to dig from the fence until lunchtime, you dig.
Commenting to Salidarnasts on yet another example of manual control over agriculture, Siarhei Antusevich, Deputy Chair of the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions, asked when exactly the army and military training had become a form of punishment or compulsory labour that a person must work off.
“It appears that this is exactly what they have become. After all, the plan is to send those deemed undisciplined or dishonest there. What remains unclear is who will determine the degree of this supposed indiscipline or dishonesty, and on what grounds punishment will follow.
“We have already witnessed a fairly similar situation, in 2012. Lukashenka visited the Barysaudreu woodworking enterprise, saw the scale of the disorder there — the company was losing large numbers of workers because of low wages and poor working conditions, while reconstruction works had still not been completed — became furious and ordered that everything be put right, that those responsible be imprisoned, and that workers be forbidden to resign until order had been restored.
“We had grown accustomed to Lukashenka’s eccentric outbursts, but even I could not have imagined that an official decree would soon follow. It stated in black and white that workers in the woodworking industry were prohibited from resigning voluntarily unless they had the written consent of their manager. They were also compulsorily transferred to fixed-term employment contracts without the right to terminate them early.
“I remember that many people called it the ‘slavery decree’. As independent trade unions, we fought for several years to have it repealed. It was eventually abolished, just before the International Labour Conference, apparently so that the authorities could demonstrate their ‘goodwill’ and supposed readiness for positive change in the country.
“The current situation involving allegedly negligent agricultural workers is similar. It does not matter what was actually said, what it meant, or how any of it relates to the law and established labour standards. Officials saluted and rushed to carry out the order.
“There is another question as well. If the authorities send people they consider to be at fault to a place where they will have access to weapons, are they certain that supposedly negligent workers will suddenly become disciplined soldiers?
“Overall, the whole story is more than strange, although I would not be surprised if it soon appeared in the form of an official decree. What else is there to say? That is what feudal rule looks like.”
Victoria Leontyeva
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