Yesterday 158 employees of the Metsamor atomic station will go to work for the last time to receive their last paychecks. They look set to quit their jobs after failing to secure significant pay rises from the plant administration. The executive director signed Gagik Markosyan signed their resignation requests. Every year, the atomic station is renovated for 35-40 days. The atomic station will be re-exploited on October 27 and rumor has it that the exploitation will be postponed for awhile. In separate letters, the workers, among them senior nuclear energy specialists, last month asked Metsamor’s director Gagik Markosyan to raise their wages by 50 percent or terminate their employment contracts. Markosyan has still not responded to their letters, trying instead to convince them to reconsider their decision. Under Armenia’s Labor Code, workers are considered to have been automatically relieved of their duties if their written quit requests are not granted or rejected for 30 days. In the case of Metsamor, the legal deadline expires on Friday. Markosyan refused to comment on the extraordinary development and its implications for Metsamor’s operational safety. A spokeswoman for the Armenian Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources also declined comment. The employees have already filed appeals for resignation and say they are ready to leave Armenia and find jobs abroad. They are certain that they will definitely find jobs because they are experienced. Markosyan is said to have broken part of the contracts. We were informed that another 500 workers have joined the protesters in the morning threatening the plant administration with unprecedented walkout. Even though leadership of the nuclear station confesses that among the staff there are such specialists, without the presence of whom it would be impossible to exploit the station and that it is impossible to find replacements. In that case, how can we explain the fact that the Armenian government let this happen in the case when Armenia is considered a nuclear power producing country? In order to satisfy the needs of the staff and increase their wages the state would need to monthly pay extra 20-25 million AMD. Moreover, even if the state wasn’t able to resolve this financial matter on its own then they could fix the problem by letting raise the price of electricity by 1 AMD, which wouldn’t affect the budget of the population too much and thus have the salaries of the staff raised. It would be naïve to consider this incident as lack of budget or inability to resolve the financial issues. In this regard, the assumptions that the staff was let go because of other political reasons sound pretty substantial. According to this version, after the Yerevan statement of Sarkozy of starting cooperation in the nuclear power production sector the Russians have made the Armenian authorities to cease the operation of the Armenian nuclear power station. Let us recall that in Yerevan Sarkozy said that in a few weeks for the purpose of survey they will send to Armenia a group of specialists, which will try to help Armenians in the sector of atomic energy. And the trade minister of France and secretary of state Pierre Lelushe, who was in the French President’s delegation, said that France is seriously discussing the matter of participating in the construction of the Armenian nuclear station. Indeed, these statements couldn’t be avoided by Russia, which has energy monopoly in Armenia. Quite numerously, Russia has made Armenia to take steps, which may be imminent for the national security of the country. If we review the matter in this aspect then we might assume that the Armenian authorities have not only sufficed the demand of the staff to increase the wages but also silently promoted to the implementation of that process. Lastly, it was even surprising that it was possible to hold such a well organized action in Armenia. Normally, the government tries to keep some of the members of such protests “silent” or “buys” their voices but in this case they abstained to do so. So it is not excluded that this time as well we are encountering the outcomes of the “strategic partnership” with Russia, as a result of which approximately 160 high-quality specialists have become unemployed (a part of them may go to Russia to work for Russians) and on the other hand the nuclear power station might be close to being shut down.
