Mass Strike Of Wildberries Employees In Russia
- 15.03.2023, 9:48
Employees of the marketplace didn't come to work all over the country because of non-payment of wages.
In Russia's Barnaul, Chita, Blagoveshchensk, Yekaterinburg, Moscow and St. Petersburg, employees of the Wildberries marketplace went on strike. Dozens of pickup points were closed. Notes on the doors said that the points would be closed until salaries were paid, Sibir Realii reported.
A large-scale strike of workers was planned for March 15. However, many cities started it before the scheduled date. Employees dissatisfied with the company's policy are also planning to go on sick leave en masse on March 16. There are already almost 10 thousand Wildberries employees in the chat room preparing for the strike.
Fourteen pickup points did not open in Chita on March 15. As Chita.ru clarifies, it concerns only branded offices, which belong to the owner of the marketplace Tatyana Bakalchuk. Pickup points operating under a franchise will be open. The pickup points also failed to open in Ulan-Ude, where Vladimir Putin arrived the day before, All Ulan-Ude reports. Offices in the Far East stopped working. In most cases, employees hung qr-codes on the doors to contact technical support. In Vladivostok, some offices are closed, and some work in the mode of cargo clearance without the issuance of orders.
Sibdepo reports that only one of four pickup points in Kemerovo is closed, and points in Novokuznetsk are working as usual. Meanwhile, the marketplace employee chatroom on Telegram states that some points are closed in Prokopyevsk, Topki and Leninsk-Kuznetsky. In Irkutsk, offices in Baikalsk, Bratsk, Ust-Ilimsk, Zheleznogorsk-Ilimsk, Tulun, Irkutsk, and Nizhneudinsk do not work.
The strikes are a reaction to the new system of fines of the marketplace. Now, the employees of the pickup points of Wildberries are collectively responsible if a customer returns a damaged item. The money is to be deducted from the daily wages. Some people have lost 100% of their salary as fines, but this is not the worst outcome - the fine is often ten times higher than the salary. It's not possible to prove their innocence in damaging items.
Fined workers have to work for free until the fine is paid. Managers were not allowed to inform employees about the impending changes in advance, as it relates to mass absenteeism. "No sane person wants to work for free".
The Wildberries management has foreseen the negative reaction of its employees and today imposed new fines - 100 thousand rubles for the owners of the pickup points for dissemination of "inaccurate or inciting to illegal actions information" and information that "expresses a disrespectful and negative attitude" to the company, as well as 100 thousand rubles for strikers.
In Moscow, the owners of the capital's Wildberries pickup points gathered in front of the Wildberries headquarters, dissatisfied with their working conditions. The police arrived at the office. After that, representatives of the marketplace agreed to hold an online meeting with protesters. The Wildberries employee once again told about the changes in functionality and 100% fines for substitution of goods.
Meanwhile, customers who could not get their packages because of the strike complained to the police and the Prosecutor's Office.
After a day of the strike, the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation instructed to check the reports of violations of the rights of Wildberries employees. The Moscow Region Prosecutor's Office will conduct the inspection.