Urals Region Prevents a Repeat of Pikalyovo

About 150 workers thought that they would borrow a page from Pikalyovo and block the main highway to Yekaterinburg when their Urals porcelain factory was shut down Tuesday over unpaid bills.

But the Sverdlovsk regional government had also learned a lesson from Pikalyovo and dispatched dozens of police officers to prevent the protest.

So instead of blocking a highway, the disgruntled workers found themselves in the cafeteria of the Bogdanovich-based factory, fretting over whether they would ever work again.

The country has been on edge about potential unrest in one-industry towns like Bogdanovich after 400 unpaid workers blocked a highway outside the Leningrad regional town of Pikalyovo on June 2, causing a 400-kilometer traffic jam and a panicky visit by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Putin harshly rebuked the factory's owner, billionaire Oleg Deripaska, and ordered him to reopen the plant. President Dmitry Medvedev followed up a week later by threatening to fire governors who failed to cope with unemployment and wage arrears.

Sverdlovsk Governor Eduard Rossel took a step toward ensuring that his job was safe Tuesday.

Local gas company Uralsevergaz had been trying to cut supplies to the Bogdanovich porcelain factory after its owner racked up a bill of 40 million rubles ($1.3 million). The factory cannot operate without gas for its ovens.

But when Uralsevergaz tried to turn off the gas earlier this month, factory employees were waiting at the valve and prevented the gas workers from fulfilling their orders, Uralsevergaz spokesman Oleg Vlasov said.

So on Tuesday, Uralsevergaz dispatched its workers in the predawn hours.

"We came at 5 a.m., earlier than the workers this time," Vlasov said by telephone.

The workers arrived two hours later and could do little but watch as the gas supplies went out at 10 a.m.

"We came to stand there [at the valve] at about 7 a.m., but the gas company had already arrived," Alexei Shevchuk, head of the factory's sales department, said by cell phone. "When they turned the gas off at about 10 a.m., many women were crying."

Eighty percent of the plant's 700 workers are women near retirement age, Shevchuk said.

"If the plant is not restarted, I will never find another job," said a factory supervisor, 53, who asked that her name be withheld for fear of reprisal. "We were desperate when we went to the highway and hoped Putin would come."

The porcelain plant is a major employer in the town of about 30,000 people, located 100 kilometers east of Yekaterinburg.

So about 150 furious workers set off in the direction of the Yekaterinburg-Tyumen highway, determined to block it until gas supplies were restored. Dozens of police officers followed them, threatening to fine and arrest them, and blocked them near the highway, the factory supervisor said.

Shevchuk said the workers had no choice but to move to the nearby factory cafeteria, where they spent the rest of the day worrying about their future.

"Our biggest concern was that the plant's stoves might be ruined because they were not heated by gas for about four hours," Shevchuk said.

The regional government told Uralsevergaz later in the day to resume minimal daily supplies of gas until the end of July so that the workers have time to properly mothball the stoves. It also announced that the factory's operations would be suspended while it searched for a new owner.

The chairman of the Sverdlovsk regional government, Viktor Koksharov, rebuked the factory's current owner at an emergency meeting that he convened to discuss the plant's problems.

"Marina Martsenyuk, the plant's owner, has tried to blackmail Uralsevergaz with the fate of the plant's 700 employees by waiting until gas supplies are suspended and not resolving the plant's problems," the government said in a statement posted on its web site.

It said Martsenyuk didn't even "deem it necessary to come to the government meeting where the destiny of her enterprise was decided."

A senior manager represented the factory instead at the meeting.

Calls to Martsenyuk's office phone went unanswered Tuesday.

Uralsevergaz said the plant has not paid a kopek for the gas it has used this year. "They owe us more than 40 million rubles in all, including 22 million for this year and 18 million for 2008," Vlasov said. "We haven't been given any reason for the nonpayments."

The Sverdlovsk government's web site said the factory's total debt amounts to 288 million rubles ($9.2 million).

No one from the plant's management could be reached for comment Tuesday. Seven plant employees, including former chief financial officer Andrei Tkachuk, were handed prison sentences of up to nine years on April 20 for property theft at the plant, the New Region news agency reported. It wasn't immediately clear whether the case was directly connected to the plant's failure to pay for its gas.

Koksharov ordered the "launch of an urgent search for an investor" for the factory at the meeting, the government web site said.

What legal procedure the government intended to use to force the current owner to give up the plant was unclear. Government spokeswoman Natalya Ponomaryova did not answer repeated calls to her telephone.

Meanwhile, the Pikalyovo factory whose closure prompted the June 2 road blockade announced Tuesday that it had restarted full operations. A spokeswoman said all 2,300 employees were back at work.