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100 Moscow Street Cleaners Strike for Workers' Rights, Higher Pay

About 100 street cleaners in work uniforms staged a strike Thursday morning outside the municipal administration building in northeast Moscow to demand official work status and higher pay, news reports said.

The protesters, mainly migrants from Central Asia, work as street cleaners for the Sokolniki municipal administration but say they were hired without official registration or proper work contracts, Vesti-Moskva reported.

The district's municipal property management office reduced their pay and then refused to pay more than 3,000 rubles ($100) per month, they said.

"What should we do? We can't even go to the doctor, nothing. Or aren't we working? Then who does the cleaning?" one of the protesters said.

Representatives of the Sokolniki municipal administration refused to talk to the demonstrators.

This is not the first street cleaners' strike in Moscow this winter. In December, dozens of street cleaners refused to clear snow in the East Izmailovo district to protest a six-month delay in their pay, Newsmsk.com reported.

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