The staff of the Nairit factory has applied to our newspaper with the request to make their complaints and grievances available to the management of the factory through our newspaper. The problem is that the board of directors of Nairit has recently fired the director of the factory, Karen Israelyan.
The staff wishes to have an explanation about the dismissal of Israelyan. According to the staff, they have appealed to the president of the trade union of the factory, and the latter has informed the appropriate bodies about that, however no explanations have thus far been given. “Karen Israelyan was a very popular person. He was the only director who was thinking about paying our salaries on time. This is the first time that the director is leaving his position without salaries owed to the staff. Moreover, Israelyan has even paid back part of the old debts that the factory owed to the staff. All the other directors owed at least 6 months of salaries to the staff before they left,” tell the workers of Nairit. Having been aware of the internal conflicts of the factory, they assume that there could have been an argument created between Israelyan and the manager of the factory, Vahan Melkonyan. The argument could have been around the distribution of the factory’s financial means. “The board reduced Israelyan’s powers. He no longer dealt with finances, and no director would ever like that. We were coming to Israelyan with our issues and he was helping us as much as he could, and if he wasn’t able to help somebody he’d make sure that the person wouldn’t get insulted. About 98% of the staff respects that person. He did care about the factory. That’s the reason that those worn-out devices can still provide production,” say the people. The old staff was very surprised to find out that the board of directors has initiated to recruit new employees into the staff. “We have worked at Nairit since 1970 and make only 80 thousand drams a month. Now they said that they’re going to raise our salaries by 25%, but this amount is small compared to their salaries and the new people whom they hired. They have started to repair the administrative building of the factory, renovating their offices, buying computers. Maybe this is also needed, but not at the expense of our salaries and input. We are hurt that the young kids, who sit in front of computers, make more than we do. A new head of security was appointed, and he told 8 of our security guards to resign. It’s not that they are trying to cut the number of employees. It’s that the salary of the security guards is going to be 130,000 dram per month. Therefore they are firing the old ones to bring their friends to work. We are really insulted about all this. We breathe the poisoned air but they make more than us. New deputy-directors were hired. Thank God one of them is our old staff member. As of the others, we don’t even know if they know what chemistry is. When we raise the issue of raising salaries, the management says that they don’t have the financial means and promise to think about it when they start to launch the production of butadiene. At present there is no production of butadiene, but they are raising their own wages,” complain the workers.
We didn’t try to verify that perhaps the management is hiring new employees to launch the production of butadiene. But the workers don’t believe this version. “First of all the butadiene workshop will not be ready sooner than two years from now. Besides that, no specialist from abroad can figure out this work. This work can be done only by the experienced specialists of the factory. Perhaps they are just formally hiring new employees, like their friends, to have them work at the newly renovated administrative building. We are people who constantly work on behalf of this factory. And we receive little money for this hard work, and even very often overtime work. We are a tight collective. If they don’t satisfy our demands we will go on strike in front of the President’s Office.”