Monday, July 31, 2017

Russian Long-Haul Truckers Strike Continues, More Political than Ever



Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 31 – A convoy of 200 striking long-haul truckers who left Moscow 11 days ago has arrived in Yekaterinburg as part of an all-Russia tour that will take them to cities in Siberia and the Russian Far East and at a protest there not only called for the end to the Plato fee system, the reason for the strike originally, but for the election of a new Russian president.

            The truckers, who held their demonstration today not on the highway but in a park in the center of the city where they put up all their protest signs, say they want to nominate Andrey Bazhutin, the president of the Couriers Union of Russia, to be president of the country (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=597EE6E9E9317 and sobkorr.ru/news/597EE6E9E9317.html).

                Speakers at today’s meeting said, the Kasparov portal reported “that practically everything in the country is now prohibited and that it is very difficult to get approval for a convoy.” In this way, they signaled that the labor action of the drivers “has become a protest not only against Plato but also against the ineffective policy of the state.”

No comments:

Post a Comment