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[Livingontheland] Russian steel workers resort to growing potatoes

From: mdnagel@verizon.net
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [Livingontheland] Russian steel workers resort to growing potatoes
Date: Fri, 01 May 2009 06:28:30 -0500 (CDT)

Russian steel
workers resort to growing potatoes
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The wave is building. Mark Nagel Everett, WA Source:
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20090430/tbs-russia-steel-potatoes-7318940.html <h1
class="clr">Russian steel workers resort to growing potatoes</h1>By Robin
Paxton and Natalya Shurmina MOSCOW/YEKATERINBURG, April 30 - Steel
workers in Russia's
industrial heartland are returning to the land to dig themselves out of
an economic crisis that has pushed national unemployment rates to an
8-year high.Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works <MAGN.MM> is
offering 1,000 plots of land around Russia's biggest steel plant on
which its employees can grow potatoes free of charge. Transport to the
farms and 24-hour security will be included."Sowing will begin
next week, weather permitting," Alexander Derunov, chairman of the
steel plant's trade union committee, was quoted as saying in
Magnitogorsk's in-house newspaper."The earth there has been fallow for
seven years now. The crop should be good."Ten
percent of the Russian workforce, or 7.5 million people, were
unemployed in March as the country headed into its first recession in a
decade. Another 1.2 million were on unpaid leave or forced holiday,
Economy Ministry data shows.Steel makers and associated
industries, such as the automotive and machine-building sectors, are
most at risk from a further round of job cuts that the ministry expects
will affect more than a third of all Russian companies."In the
current situation, protecting the interests of its workers has become a
pressing concern for the management," said Yevgeny Kovtunov, a
spokesman for Magnitogorsk, which employs about 25,000 people in the
Ural mountains city of the same name.AVOIDING UNRESTSteering
Russia through the economic crisis and avoiding mass social unrest
poses a major challenge for the country's leaders, who have grown
accustomed to nearly a decade of economic boom fuelled by high oil and
commodity prices."Everyone is saying: 'Crisis! Crisis!'," said
Eduard Rossel, the long-serving governor of Sverdlovsk region, home to
many of Russia's metallurgical and machine-building enterprises."We
need to gossip less about the crisis, and work harder," he told
reporters."Give
me a hammer, a saw, and in a few months I will build a house, a
vegetable garden, and do everything to save myself and my family."
Sverdlovsk region has 82,600 registered unemployed, more than triple
the number of jobless at the beginning of October. The rate at which
unemployment is growing, however, has slowed to 2-3 percent each week
from 10 percent in January.In Chelyabinsk, the neighbouring
region that is home to the Magnitogorsk steel plant, 67,318 people are
registered unemployed -- 3.7 percent of the working
population. </body></html>

[Livingontheland] Russian steel workers resort to growing potatoes, mdnagel, 05/01/2009
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- [Livingontheland] Russian steel workers resort to growing potatoes, mdnagel, 05/01/2009