‘We’ve already sent about a dozen letters to METRO Cash & Carry’s management, including both the Regional Manager of Store 30 and the General Director for Russia; two of these letters contained a detailed action plan that could help them cope with the problem. However, none of our letters have been replied to,’ Chairman of Yekaterinburg Trade Networks trade union Alexander Brusnitsyn said to an UrBC reporter.

In the meantime, METRO Cash & Carry’s Yekaterinburg branch set up a trade union (a member of the Russian Federation Trade Union’s local division) on March 5, 2009. A day later, the Regional Manager of Store 30 A. Lyapustin was officially informed of the store workers’ trade union membership and of the need to draw up a document that would ensure their labor rights. The store’s management was then reported to insist on the workers leaving the trade union, allegedly threatening them with redundancies.

‘The management has stopped threatening the workers directly by now, but they are exerting a lot of pressure on them by forever finding faults with the employees, making them write explanatory papers, and imposing inconvenient working hours. A lot of workers feel frightened and abstain from joining the trade union, even though there are twenty-eight of us already. These are the workers employed at stores 30 and 29,’ Brusnitsyn said.