The leader of the trade union organization of the Ford plant (Vsevolozhsk), Alexey Etmanov, the organizer of the workers’ strike that lasted almost a month at the enterprise, told Kommersant yesterday that the plant administration threatened him and his deputy Vladimir Lesik with dismissal in a private conversation.

“Article 414 of the Labor Code directly states that an employee’s participation in a strike cannot be considered a violation of labor discipline and cannot serve as grounds for termination of an employment contract,” says Matvey Levant, managing partner of the law firm Levant and Partners. He suggests that perhaps Ford’s lawyers are trying to circumvent this rule by using the wording “participation in a conference.” For example, they came to the conclusion that the conference was held in violation of the provisions on the procedure for declaring a strike and this gives grounds to consider participation in it and, accordingly, the absence of workers from the workplace as absenteeism. “I think that it will be difficult for the company to defend dismissal based on such wording in court, since the court examines not only the formal side of the relationship between the employee and the employer,” the lawyer believes. “And from this point of view, Ford’s actions are very similar to an attempt to dismiss for participation in a strike, which is directly prohibited by law.” (“Kommersant” No. 4 (3821) dated January 17, 2008)