Programmer fired for door-handle and cell phone
It concerns all employees regardless of whether they work in a workshop or in an office. What did the administration do it for?
At the
waiting room of the enterprise we managed to hear the following:
“Imagine a butcher
with a knife trying to answer a phone call at work. Anything may happen.
He may wound himself or a person standing next to him. That’s why we have forbidden it. No one is allowed to use a cell phone so that no one would be offended. We have included the regulation into our routine”.
The plant lawyer gave another explanation of the issue. He said that it was possible to organize a theft of meat with the help of cell phones. The strange regulation would
not have been paid so much attention to but for the fact that many people have
started suffering after its implementation.
Zmіtser Lyubetskі worked as an operator at that meat-packing plant. According to him, he had never needed to enter the workshops because he spent all his work time in the office working on his PC. One day his office door handle
got broken.
Zmіtser Lyubetskі: "I kept asking to repair the door handle for several months on end. The foreman of the construction
workshop kept promising: “Sure, we
will soon send you a new one”.
A bit later the director deprived me of my bonus payment.
It happened on November 1. Then, on December 12, I arrived at work and noticed not only the guard but also the director and his deputy at the entrance checkpoint.
“Do you have a
cell phone on you?”, —they asked. “I do”, — I answered. “Show it. You’ve never left it at the checkpoint?” — “Never”. — “Write an explanatory note”.
I saw three people writing explanatory notes for the same reason. After you submit the explanatory note, the director writes an order to deprive you of your bonus payment.
My boss told me: write an application for an unsolicited dismissal if you don’t want problems".
Zmіtser did not write any application. So, he was fired for “systematic negligence of his duties”, that is for the door handle, cell phone and refusal to write the application.
He turned to the trade union and lodged a complaint to the court. By the way, it was only then when he found out the administration’ official reason for forbidding the usage of cell phones at the plant.
Lyubetskі was successful in action, and the reason of his dismissal was changed to “voluntary withdrawal”. He will also receive 700 USD for moral damage. Now he is busy looking for a new job at a non-governmental enterprise.
But the problem remains unsolved. Cell phones are still forbidden and, what is more, some other Mahileu enterprises have followed the plant’s example. Alyaksandr Karaleu, the lawyer who pled Lyubetskі’s case, gave a simple explanation of the issue:
Alyaksandr Karaleu: “The head of Mahileu meat-packing plant and some other directors, like the head of Mahileu milk plant, are notorious petty tyrants.
They are treating people the way they feel like to. People start complaining and trying to defend their rights only when they are completely worn out”.
The Belarusian idiosyncrasy — to endure everything to the bitter end — is not in favour of Belarusians. Nothing has changed after the dismissal of Zmіtser Lyubetskі. It seems as if people were not deprived of any constitutional right.
