UrBC, Yekaterinburg, November 16, 2011. A picket in protest of closing down the electrolysis facilities at UC RUSAL Bogoslovsky smelter will be held in Krasnoturyinsk’s main square from noon to 1 PM on November 26, 2011. The city council has already given the applicants the permission to protest, Vecherny Krasnoturyinsk reports.

In the meantime, the company is planning to shut down some of its loss-making, obsolete hydrolysis facilities.

‘Before one shuts down such facilities, new jobs must be created, and where are those jobs? Ever since UC RUSAL arrived at the enterprise, the company has been gradually destroyed for over five years now. All the social infrastructure is either annihilated or sold, not a penny was invested in the plant’s development, our best workers left, no attention was paid to environmental issues, there were no capital repairs to speak of, and the repairs that did take place were only enough to keep the plant going. One cannot imagine what kind of an idiot it should take to close down one of the country’s most unique plants producing highest quality aluminum. Bogoslovsky smelter’s aluminum and alumina are used to make Russia’s best alloys, protectors for the shipbuilding industry, and anti-corrosion protection for OCTG pipes that is currently unique to Russia. So, closing down the electrolysis departments will result in the shut-down of aluminum powders production department, and 1,500 healthy, sturdy workers will be thrown into the streets,’ Vecherny Krasnoturyinsk quotes the picket organizers as saying.