MICHAEL BAGHDASAROV IS ANGRY
September 25 2013
“Armavia” owner ordered not to pay the salaries of the employees who
had applied to court with a claim to receive the bonuses “Armavia”
Air Company’ owner Mikhail Baghdasarov does not like that his former
employees make a demand against him, to the point, the demand is
legal: the former flight stewards demand their bonuses for 3 years
of work. In the conversation with “Aravot”, a group of employees of
“Armavia” told that Baghdasarov was so angry on his former employees
that he ordered not to pay the salaries of about 20 flight stewards,
just for the reason that they have appealed to the court to get their
per diems from “Armavia”. “Baghdasarov was in such a fury that he had
instructed the management not to pay the wages thereof. When this news
reached us, we could not believe, we went to the office to clarify,
one of the directors said that there is an order from above, it is
not our fault. Now, the rest of us are paid the salaries for March-
April, and we went to get ours, they did not give it to us”, – assured
a group of former employees of “Armavia” to “Aravot”. According to
them, they first did not have the intention to apply to the court, but
the persuasion to receive their per diems through the court came from
the State Labor Inspectorate and the RA President’s office, and they
have thought that if such an admonition is made by 2 state systems,
it might be the only way out to get what they earned. “We were told
from the Inspectorate that it would be difficult for them to prove
the bonuses, it would be better to apply to the court. We were also
told from the President’s office that we should resolve these issue by
the court, so, we have applied, but “Armavia” does not care for us,
the representative of “Armavia” did not appear before the court. But
the State Labor Inspectorate does not respond to our request, we wrote
three letters to the President of Armenia to give instruction to the
Inspectorate to give a proceeding to our application, after the 3rd
letter to the President the Inspectorate began to get involved with
our case,”- said the former employees of the airline. To the point,
in our conversation the flight stewards did not want to introduce
themselves, claiming that Michael Baghdasarov would get more furious.
“He has a habit of revenging. To one of our guts, as punishment, he
ordered not to pay salary, or at least pay the last. When this gut
was interested why, Baghdasarov had told ‘you show up by media quite
a lot.” The per diems requested by the former employees applied to
the court is about 500 thousand drams, which Mr. Baghdasarov want to
“wash off”. According to flight stewards, “Those 500 thousand drams
are of no value as of today, because 1-2 years ago this amount cost
at least something, but now we are in need for it, because we do not
have a job, we live in debts.” While the Court would decide the issue
of paying per diems to the formers flight stewards of “Armavia”, the
calculation and payment of workers’ salaries has remained unsettled.
The matter is that the State Labor Inspectorate, which should deal
with defining the salary scales, has been dissolved by the government
decree, and it merged to the sanitary anti-epidemic inspection. And
now, as far as the merging process of these two inspections is not
completed, we were unable to establish a contact with the Inspectorate
to find out at what phase is the issue of salary payment to flight
stewards. And, as the former “Armavia” employees assured, they had
applied to the Inspectorate to regulate the size of the amount of wages
for their work for recent months. According to the flight stewards,
“Armavia” has terminated its flights, and was not exempting us from
work, we were idle for a month and a half, we did not get the order to
be released, in the conversation with the lawyer of the Inspectorate
we found out that pursuant to the law, the salary for the months of
idleness is estimated according to the range of the average salary,
whereas “Armavia” had estimated by the the rate of the salary, which is
40 thousand drams, and our average salary is about 400 thousand drams
and one and a half month will be about 600 thousand drams. Now, there
is no Inspectorate, there is no one to get involved in our case. It
leaves the impression that the Inspectorate is shut down because of
us. Everything is expected to be in this country, the government
prefers to protect oligarchs rather than ordinary employees.” The
former employees of “Armavia” have decided to organize a protest
near the U.S. Embassy, so, as they say, to inform the international
community about how the workers’ rights in Armenia are violated. “So,
what else can we do, we turn to the government, they says that we
do not have leverage to influence, and if you do not have leverage,
write down a resignation letter and leave your office.” The former
employees of “Armavia”, even though they do not have high hopes that
there will be an entity in Armenia that can make a decision against
the businessman Mikhail Baghdasarov, however, to protect their rights
they are going to apply for all possible instances. “We are going to
write a letter to the Ombudsman if this instance also “washes off”
our case, then we’ll hold demonstrations every day.”
Nelly BABAYAN
Read more at:
http://en.aravot.am/2013/09/25/161774/