Yesterday the first instance court of Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun recognized the constitutional right of “ArmenTel” workers as illegal. The “ArmenTel” joint-stock company administration had appealed to the 1st instance court of Arabkir and Kanaker-Zeytun communities in order to recognize the workers’ strike organized by the “Informational Technologies” workers as illegal. Let’s mention the fact that the workers had warned “ArmenTel” that they would organize a strike if the company had not met their requirement. The strikers had demanded firing chief of the “Informational technologies” administration by accusing him of holding back development of informational and communications technologies in Armenia, spending money unwisely and persecuting professionals. So, they organized a workers’ strike in the early morning hours of November 17 (at 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.). Then, at around 1 p.m. the strikers received a note from the first instance court of Zeytun-Kanaker stating that, according to the application sent by “ArmenTel”, an action had been brought up and the court session was going to take place on November 18 at 11 a.m. Basically, informing the strikers about the court hearing was done in a way so that they didn’t even have time to get acquainted with the action brought up against them and get a lawyer. Besides that, “ArmenTel” had appealed to the court on November 11 and had asked the court to recognize the strike which was going to take place on November 17 as illegal. The court held a closed door meeting yesterday and after a long discussion, it made a decision not to recognize the strike as legal. It is hard to say how legal and correct “ArmenTel” was when it appealed to the court before the strike had even taken place; or if the court made the right decision by accepting that appeal and considering it legal-especially since the event being discussed had not even happened yet and which is considered illegal by constitutional law. But the Kanaker-Zeytun court, despite the time when it accepted the court appeal, had correctly calculated the minutes needed to start and finish the strike and had sent the court’s note just when the strikers had finished. This means that it doesn’t matter when the appealer had brought up the action. What’s important is that the court had sent the notification to the corresponding side after the workers’ strike was over.
Let’s not forget to mention that “ArmenTel” had written the following statement in the notification: “recognizing the workers’ strike as illegal will serve as a basis for firing the participants.” Basically, if the corresponding side does not protest 15 days after the court’s verdict, then the workers’ strike participants will lose their jobs. President of the workers’ strike committee of “ArmenTel” Harutyun Kharatyan informed us that they will most definitely protest against the verdict at the second instance court.
A.A.