‘This Is Totally Not Relatable To Us: How Is It Possible To Forbid A Person To Quit?

• 28.07.2023, 8:54

Agricultural enterprises began to sabotage Lukashenka's order.

At a conference call on July 21 dedicated to the harvesting campaign, Aliaksandr Lukashenka acknowledged serious problems with personnel in the agricultural sector of Belarus. At the same time, the authorities are going to solve the problems that have been accumulating for more than one year in a radical way, forbidding people to quit from agricultural enterprises, Deutsche Welle reports.

Is it impossible to quit without the permission of officials?

According to Aliaksandr Lukashenka, the time has come to put things in order with personnel in agriculture: “Not a single machine operator, milkmaid, or any other worker at an agricultural enterprise (collective farm, state farm) can take a step left or right without the decision of their boss.”

In addition, he voiced a demand, from which it follows that in the agrarian sector of the country a ban on quitting without the corresponding decision of a chairman of the district executive committee is actually introduced. “If you quit — no one in the country can hire you until you submit a certificate from your previous place of work, a normal characteristic,” Lukashenka said.

This demand also applies to officials in the regions, who also cannot “quit” work on their own initiative. At the same time, the harvesting campaign was declared a “nationwide affair”, and the authorities are going to compensate for the shortage of personnel with the help of three thousand machine operators.

Where to find them? Lukashenka obliged the chairmen of the regional executive committees, together with industrial enterprises, to submit proposals and plans. “I know that many men, especially those who come from the countryside, purposefully take vacations in July and get jobs as combine operators in order to earn good extra money for their families,” Aliaksandr Lukashenka said.

There is a shortage of students in agricultural universities

Serious personnel problems in the country's agriculture are also evidenced by the fact that agricultural universities in Belarus are forced to announce an additional enrollment on simplified terms. So, applicants for government-sponsored targeted tuition will not have to take entrance exams. At the same time, students are promised a monthly guaranteed additional payment from the organization, where they will have to go to work after graduation.

However, even such preferential terms do not seem to be attractive. The additional enrollment lasts until July 27, inclusive, but even now universities recognize that it will not be possible to fully fulfill the plan for enrolling students. For example, at the Hrodna Agrarian University, 25 applications for 82 government-sponsored places were submitted a day before the deadline for accepting documents for the specialty “Manufacturing of products of animal origin”.

Even worse is the situation at the Belarusian State Agricultural Academy, where Aliaksandr Lukashenka once studied. Thus, 124 applications were submitted for 266 places at the agrotechnological and biotechnological faculties. For the specialty “Manufacturing of products of plant origin”, only a third of the places are filled.

The Minister of Agriculture of Belarus Ihar Brylo does not hide problems with personnel. According to him, having received “agrarian” diplomas, only 52% of university graduates remain to work in the countryside after the mandatory work placement.

“We need to show the youth all the best that is in agriculture, so that the youth do not get the impression: “Oh, there is dirt, some kind of mess,” the head of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food said.

At the same time, Ihar Brylo himself may leave his ministerial post in the near future. Aliaksandr Lukashenka has already announced his resignation during a conference call.

There is work and housing, but they pay little

The main reason for the shortage of personnel in the agricultural enterprises of Belarus remains the low level of income. According to the personnel department of one of the farms in the Vitsebsk region, they are ready to hire milkmaids and livestock breeders, but they promise a salary of 554 Belarusian rubles (about 165 euros).

“We honestly say that there will be no other additional payments yet, but we can provide service housing for which you don’t have to pay,” says DW’s interlocutor.

In another farm in the same region, they are urgently looking for a veterinarian and, in addition to housing, they guarantee earnings of 2,500 Belarusian rubles (750 euros): “We are ready to discuss the salary, it can be higher if a person is interested in staying with us for at least a couple of years”.

An agricultural enterprise in the Kobryn district of the Brest region reported that they need workers both in the field and on the farm, and they intend to pay in the range of 1,200-2,200 rubles (360-660 euros).

As it turned out, the farm has experience in hiring Ukrainian citizens who worked here on a rotational basis. “Teams from neighboring Ukrainian villages came, were engaged in weeding, harvesting, and did business on the farm — this approach suited us,” the agricultural enterprise noted. Now they are sadly stating that the pandemic, and now the war in Ukraine, is forcing them to look for new options for finding workers.

Woodworking was also threatened with bans

Will the ban on dismissal help to retain personnel? “This is not relatable to us at all: how can you forbid a person to quit — what kind of “serfdom” is this?” They seem surprised at one of the agricultural enterprises.

The personnel department of the economy explained that strict obligations relate, first of all, to young specialists who need to work after graduation. But even they have many legal opportunities to change jobs ahead of schedule.

Workers in the woodworking industry of Belarus know firsthand what the threats of a ban on dismissal mean. In 2012, Alexander Lukashenko, visiting Borisovdrev, was dissatisfied with the pace of modernization of woodworking enterprises.

“Until the completion of modernization and reconstruction, the dismissal of workers is prohibited,” Lukashenka said at the time. - An employee cannot leave this enterprise without the permission of the manager. Let him go - let him go, if he doesn't let him go - he must work. For violation - forced labor.

According to the engineer of one of the woodworking enterprises, those loud statements had no serious consequences. “I know several cases when people were not fired right now, if it is an intelligent specialist,” the man recalls. “But time passed, and there was no way to keep it forcibly.”

The engineer believes that the current threat to ban quitting should be perceived in the same way: “If there are no material incentives to stay in the countryside, then people will leave - and it’s good if they go to Belarusian cities, and not abroad.”The personnel department of the economy explained that strict obligations relate, first of all, to young specialists who need to work after graduation. But even they have many legal opportunities to change jobs ahead of schedule.

Workers in the woodworking industry of Belarus know firsthand what the threats of a ban on quitting mean. In 2012, Aliaksandr Lukashenka, visiting Borisovdrev, was dissatisfied with the pace of modernization of woodworking enterprises.

“Until the completion of modernization and reconstruction, the dismissal of workers is prohibited,” Lukashenka said at the time. “An employee cannot leave this enterprise without the permission of the manager. If the boss lets him go — let him go, if he doesn't let him go — he must work. For violation — forced labor.”

According to the engineer of one of the woodworking enterprises, those loud statements had no serious consequences. “I know several cases when people were not fired right now, if it is an intelligent specialist,” the man recalls. “But time passed, and there was no way to keep them forcibly.”

The engineer believes that the current threat to ban quitting should be perceived in the same way: “If there are no material incentives to stay in the countryside, then people will leave — and it’s good if they go to Belarusian cities, and not abroad”.