Hero of capitalist labor
f capitalist labor
Wealth: $3.2 billion
Wealth last year: $2.4 billion
Field of Activity: Metallurgy, agricultural business
The legendary ‘red director’ Volodymyr Boyko, known for his strong-armed Soviet management style and control of workers, has had to adopt to capitalism. To optimize the competitiveness of Illych Mariupol Metallurgical Plant, a few tens of thousands of workers will be let go in the near future. This is a compulsorymeasure, but for Boyko, the socialist, it goes against his Marxist beliefs. Boyko built his entire political and business career on the basis of Marxist-Leninist ideals, and a portrait of Lenin still hangs in his office.
The Illych factory provided cheap kindergartens, inexpensive vouchers to a factory sanatorium and offered other optional benefits. Oleksandr Moroz, Boyko’s party leader, after visiting the enterprise, labeled it as an “example of socialism” and “socialist paradise.”
“Illych factory workers repaired roads, bridges, helped law enforcement, hospitals, schools, supported kindergartens. It is time to bring this work to a reasonable level and partly decrease the size of the social support provided,” said Boyko in February 2008. “Such are the realities of today.”
By getting rid of unprofitable assets, the factory’s general manager increased productivity, and thus the market value of vast Soviet-built factory. Is it a pre-sale preparation? “The factory is not for sale,” said Boyko, who repeatedly insists the factory belongs to the working collective. A company controlled by management holds the shares, but is de facto controlled by Boyko.
“The issues of a merger may be and are being discussed,” he added.
