WORKERS AND MANAGEMENT IN DEFENSE INDUSTRIES UNHAPPY.

At a Moscow meeting yesterday organized by the League for Assistance to Defense Enterprises, a coalition of military-complex plant directors and trade union leaders called for the dismissal of the government. Representatives of the two groups said that they had lost confidence in the present cabinet’s ability to overcome the crisis in the economy.

Also this week, workers residing in two widely-separated cities — each of which is dependent on the Russian navy for its well-being — once again threatened to strike or actually took to the streets over unpaid wages. In the northern city of Severodvinsk, workers at the city’s four shipyards sent a letter to the government on March 3 threatening to stop all work unless they are paid their back wages. Vyacheslav Durkin, a union official, said that the workers are owed 300 billion rubles while the Ministry of Defense owes the shipyards 1.2 trillion rubles for the construction and repair of submarines and other warships. In the Far Eastern city of Bolshoi Kamen, 2,000 workers at the Zvezda submarine repair facility yesterday blocked the highway connecting Vladivostok and Nakhodka. They were demanding both their back wages and the resignation of the government. Last November, the mayor of Bolshoi Kamen warned the population that they might have to move elsewhere during the winter to keep warm because the city had used up all its fuel reserves and could not buy any more until the Ministry of Defense paid its debts. (RIA Novosti, March 4; Interfax, March 5, November 22, 1996)

Ukrainian Ex-Premier Returns from Israeli Refuge.