Hundreds of AvtoVAZ workers rallied Saturday in Tolyatti to demand that the management be fired and the company nationalized, a day after managers promised to return the carmaker to profitability next year.
Police estimated that about 700 people participated in the sanctioned protest, which was organized by the independent Unity labor union, while estimates in local newspapers ranged up to 3,000. The carmaker employs more than 100,000 people.
The protesters presented a list of 13 demands, including for full-time production to resume on Nov. 1 and salaries to be raised to 25,000 rubles ($850) per month, RIA-Novosti reported.
“We all expect and fear layoffs. That’s all everyone is talking about,” one assembly worker told Interfax. “My salary and my husband’s are very low, about 7,000 rubles.”
About 5,000 people will be laid off starting Dec. 14 to help cut costs.
Speakers reminded protesters that United Russia had campaigned on a promise of 25,000 ruble salaries ahead of the 2007 State Duma elections, Vedomosti reported on its web site.
Anatoly Ivanov, a United Russia deputy representing the Samara region in the Duma, told the rally that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin should be appointed to the helm of AvtoVAZ.
“We demand that Putin is appointed president of AvtoVAZ. Let him run the factory as a second job,” Ivanov said.
Layoffs and other measures will help AvtoVAZ stop operating at a loss starting next year, the plant’s vice president for strategy, Grigory Khvorostyanov, said Friday.
The plant expects to make 300,000 cars in 2009, while it needs to make and sell 600,000 to break even. Next year, the break-even point will be 445,000 cars and the plant’s goal is to produce that number of cars, he said.
Khvorostyanov also revealed ambitious plans for a new line of cars by 2012 that would require 240 million euros ($358 million) in investment, two-thirds of which would come from Renault-Nissan, which owns a 25 percent stake in AvtoVAZ. The models will include two AvtoVAZ brands, two Renault brands and one from Nissan, he said.
The plant would begin producing the two Renault models in the first half of 2012 and launch the Nissan model in the second half, he said.
Meanwhile, AvtoVAZ will launch a new budget model based on the Lada Kalina by 2012. The low-cost car would cost less than 300,000 rubles and be among three AvtoVAZ low-cost models, said Oleg Grunenkov, director of the budget car program at AvtoVAZ.
Renault, which received a warning from Putin earlier this month to invest in AvtoVAZ or risk seeing its stake diluted, said it had just started discussing the investment project and was not close to a deal. “We are still in talks,” spokeswoman Oksana Nazarova said Friday. “It’s true that we are discussing the possibilities for a new line of models, but the process only began last week. It’s not the kind of project that can be fully evaluated in a week.”