Trade Union Association of Bohemia, Moravia & Silesia, Czech Republic, expresses its indignation about an intention of the Zetor Tractors, JSC, to fire 260 its employees by end of March 2019.

The mark of Zetor, it means more than 72-years-history, belonging amongst important symbols of former Czechoslovak industrial production during the period of socialist society’s building after the WW II. Since November 1989, the factory was staggering on the edge of its very existence due to the privatization as well as due to the purposeful abandoning of Eastern Europe’s markets. The company’s employees, especially the workers, suffered ever the most. It has been difficult to stack up against the competition of capital trans-nationals, to be ever occurring at the expense of ordinary employees as the worst consequence. The capitalist order doesn’t provide social security, the social state being a chimera.  

Now, in the time of loudly proclaimed economical boom, it shows that the so-called economic growth doesn’t stand on a solid foundation. Currently, all the situation in the Zetor Tractors, JSC, repeats once again, now, when the Employers’ Unions, shouting to face a shortage of cheap both skilled and unskilled labour, try to attract foreign workers into Czech Republic. We say it is about the capitalist society’s permanent by-products, when the company refer to the markets to be lost, the morale of payment to be bad and the sector of agriculture to be supported very little. That’s why the accord with the Zetor management about 40 per cent of employees, as the company’s trade union representatives have announced, is no solution for the fired employees. Moreover, the remaining ones are thrown by the accord into the same both social and economical uncertainty if the company survives or not.  

Given by this, we express our deepest solidarity with all employees of the Zetor Tractors, JSC, primarily with those losing their jobs by March 2019. The employees, the workers and the other working people have the right for living in dignity as well as for both economical and social securities. 

OSČMS Secretariat

Prague, Czech Rep., Dec 18, 2018