HY RU EN
Asset 3

Loading

End of content No more pages to load

Your search did not match any articles

Sara Petrosyan

Trade Union Says Working and Living Conditions Are Fine

According to Arkady Sargsyan, chairman of the of the Agarak Copper-Molybdenum Plant JSC trade union, matters related to social and living conditions, the protection of labor, and so on at the plant are in good order. The U.S-based Comsup Commodities, which purchased the plant in 2003, provides its 1,275 employees with the following benefits:

• 50,000 drams (about $125) for a death in an employee's family;

• 25,000-50,000 drams in sick pay;

• Funeral costs in the event of an employee's death, even if it not related to the production process. If the death occurs as a result of a workplace accident, in addition to the funeral costs, the plant covers all the other related expenses and provides the gravestone.

In the three years that Comsup Commodities has been managing the plant there has been one death, in 2004, and some eight to ten accidents of varying seriousness each year. Twenty-nine employees have received compensation for different injuries suffered during the production process - only one accident occurred last year, and others were as long as forty years ago. According to the trade union leader, the low number of accidents compared to other plants is due to the fact that the management pays careful attention to the improvement of working conditions and to safety and accident prevention measures.

Comsup Commodities also provides its employees and their families with medical insurance. The Agarak plant has signed contracts with the Agarak Hospital, the Diagnostic Center of Goris, and the Erebuni, Saint Nerses the Great, and Armenia Medical Centers for medical care. They have with the Nork-Marash Cardiological Center as well, for cardiac surgery for employees only.

Arkady Sargsyan informed us that management keeps working to improve working conditions; it has recently set up mobile medical clinics to provide first aid at the concentration plant and is also planning to renovate the living quarters.

Veteran workers at the plant suffer from a debilitating occupational disease, silicosis (a high concentration of silicate dust in lungs). The state has fixed the disability pension at 2,600 drams (about $7), but management at the plant has increased pensions in accordance with the rise in wages (over these years the wages have been raised by 20%). According to the union leader, there are retired workers from the Agarak plant who get from 20,000 to 50,000 drams a month in disability pensions.

Sargsyan noted that the management hasn't yet restored all the privileges envisioned for the metallurgists in the Soviet era, such as paid vacations in rest homes. “We are confident that when we sign a collective agreement with the management this too will become a reality. We have a draft collective agreement ready, but negotiations are still going on” he said.

Write a comment

If you found a typo you can notify us by selecting the text area and pressing CTRL+Enter