On July 20, 2024, the Palace of Sports in the capital city of Minsk hosted an event titled “The Patriotic Forum “The 30th Anniversary of the Institute of Presidency in the Republic of Belarus”. The official title of the forum masks its real purpose – to extol Aliaksander Lukashenka and his role in the history of Belarus. The gathering was attended by the Chairman of the Trade Union Federation of Belarus (FPB) Yuriy Senko who voiced some loud statements, speaking in support of Lukashenka.
“Lukashenka stood up to protect the interests of the working man. There have been repeated attempts to break our course, our development model, to make us give up social protection, stop our enterprises, and destroy our worker collectives. These attempts haven’t worked out and they never will because our President has ever been and will ever be with the people and for the people. And we are all together, together with our President”, declared Senko.
In the meanwhile, the International Trade Union Federation (ITUC) has published this year’s edition of its Global Rights Index where Belarus, again, found itself among the world’s ten worst countries for workers. The Index marks a growing number of countries where the freedom of speech and assembly is restricted and stresses that independent trade union movements in Belarus, Egypt, Hong Kong, and Sudan have been destroyed by the authorities. Since April 2022, Belarus has seen the mounting repressions against independent trade unions resulting in 42 union leaders and activists being unlawfully detained or imprisoned. These activists are put on the lists of “extremists and terrorists” and suffer harsh and abusive treatment.
Apart from the repressions, Belarusian workers’ wage levels remain far below those of their neighbours, except for the war-ravaged Ukraine. This leads to a massive outflow of labour which is confirmed by the record-setting 163,000 vacancies in the national vacancies bank.
However, representatives of the pro-Government Trade Union Federation of Belarus choose to ignore those problems, focusing their efforts on the creation of Lukashenka’s personality cult.
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