For over a week, workers at large Belarusian state-run factories have been declaring unilateral strikes. They have joined protesters in calling for fair elections and the release of political prisoners.
On Aug. 19, workers of Grodno-Azot, the country’s largest fertilizer producer, marched toward the Grodno city center to demand the resignation of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
In Grodno, a regional capital near the Polish border, protesters and workers on strike feel relatively safe.
The Grodno City Council voted to allow protesters to gather on the city’s main square. Protesters held in Grodno detention centers were freed, and the local police apologized for the brutality used against peaceful demonstrators.
But that only happened after 30,000 people — just under 10% of Grodno’s population — took to the streets in protest on Aug. 16.
Yet Grodno remains the only large city in Belarus where protesters were able to start a dialogue with the authorities. Overall, the central government and its local representatives have been raising the stakes, attacking protesters and threatening those workers who decide to stand up for their rights.
With the street protests winding down, employees of state-owned enterprises across Belarus are presented with an unpleasant choice — stop the strike or lose their job.
“Many workers are scared and confused,” says Belarusian journalist Kanstantsin Lashkevich.
In a country where all the largest enterprises are run by the state, losing a factory job means you may never find another.
Belarus on strike
Belarus has never quite made it to capitalism. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, independent Belarus continued to hold on to state enterprises and maintain an excessively large state workforce.
According to the CIA World Factbook, around 80% of Belarusian industry remains in state-hands, while the state-owned entities account for over 70% of the country’s economy. Belarus’ gross domestic product in 2019 was $63 billion.
Built during Lukashenko’s 26-year reign, this system kept his powers intact.
“The workers were Lukashenko’s loyal electorate, and it is a big deal to Lukashenko that now he is losing them,” says Kaciaryna Šmacina, an analyst at the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies.
The protests in Belarus started on Aug. 9 as a response to electoral fraud committed during the country’s presidential election.
Read More: Lukashenko falsifies election, declares war on Belarusians
The protesters in Belarus have faced unprecedented brutality from the local riot police and special forces of the Belarusian security agency. To suppress the protests, riot police fired rubber bullets, hurled flash grenades, and used water cannons.
At least four people were killed by the police, hundreds were injured and over 7,000 were detained. Those detained were held for days without official charges and faced torture in captivity.
At the heart of the protests, over 200,000 people took to the streets of Minsk on Aug. 16 to demand Lukashenko resign.
Workers of state-owned factories all around Belarus went on strike on Aug. 12.
A day later, workers of the Minsk Automobile Plant (MAZ) and the Belarus Automobile Plant (BelAz), two of the country’s largest vehicle producers, gathered outside their workplaces to protest police brutality and electoral fraud.
In an amateur video shot at the MAZ plant, people are seen shouting “elections, elections!”
That same week, workers at over 10 large state-owned enterprises declared indefinite strikes and began forming strike committees to support workers.
On Aug. 16, Belarusian businesspeople living in the country and abroad created the Belarus Solidarity Foundation “to help those who lost their jobs due to political repression,” the fund’s Facebook page reads.
As of Aug. 20, the foundation was able to gather over $1.5 million, with over 28,000 people chipping in.
A similar fund called BY_HELP, tasked with aiding those who were wounded during protests and tortured in captivity, has gathered over $2.7 million.
Lukashenko initially downplayed the problem.
“I was told that on MAZ or the Minsk Tractor Factory (MTZ) 20 people stopped working and went somewhere,” Lukashenko said on Aug. 14.
On the same day, over 1,000 workers of MAZ and the Minsk Tractor Factory held a joint march toward downtown Minsk, chanting “join us.” Thousands of protesters heeded their call.
Nationwide strikes began all over Belarus.
The workers of state-owned Belaruskali in Soligorsk, one of the world’s largest potash fertilizer producers, stopped shipping metal as part of the protest. In 2018, the enterprise recorded a net profit of $330 million.
Workers of Naftan, one of Belarus’ two oil refineries, said that they would shut down the plant if their political demands were not met by Aug. 27.
At Naftan, Grodno-Azot and Belaruskali, over half of the workforce signed a request for an official strike to be held in accordance with the law. Each enterprise has over 10,000 employees.
On Aug. 17, Lukashenko decided to visit one of the Minsk factories on strike.
“You want to hold fair elections, but until you kill me, there will be no other elections,” Lukashenko said. Factory workers began to chant “leave!”
As the audience continued to heckle him, Lukashenko fired back: “I’ve said everything. You can now shout: ‘leave.’” Then he left.
Belarusian companies have already lost an estimated half a billion dollars, says Valery Kavaleuski, an expert at the World Bank, who previously served in the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Crushing dissent
Despite the protests, Lukashenko’s regime is on the offensive. Government officials and factory heads subordinate to the government have been threatening workers with salary cuts, firings and fines.
Some factories reportedly locked their employees inside, ordering them to keep working, says Kavaleuski. Official state-controlled labor unions are siding with the government.
“The main message of the authorities is that a political strike is illegal,” says Lashkevich. He adds that, according to Belarusian law, the money collected for workers on strike can also be deemed illegal by the government.
“The law is written in such a way as to make a political strike impossible,” he says.
Gleb Sandras, a spokesman for the recently created Belaruskali strike committee, said on Aug. 19 that two strike committee members were arrested.
“Now we are deciding whether to continue the strike or not and, if to continue, then in what form,” he said.
Strikes at the Minsk automobile plants, which were at the forefront of the initial protest, increasingly look defeated. Despite initially proclaiming a strike to express dissatisfaction with the regime, these plants are now continuing to work at normal output.
Now, even the Grodno City Council is backtracking on its initial promises to the opposition.
On Aug. 20, Grodno Mayor Mechislav Goy issued a statement in which he said that the protesters are calling for illegal strikes and are threatening heads of enterprises, families of law enforcement officials and military personnel.
Goy didn’t provide any evidence of this. Lashkevich thinks that the mayor was forced to issue the statement by the central government.
“It now looks like the authorities have begun a massive counteroffensive,” says Lashkevich.
“And it looks like they are succeeding,” he adds.
