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WP: Belarus’ ruler tries to solve economic problems by banning workers from leaving their jobs


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http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/belarus-ruler-tries-to-solve-economic-problems-by-banning-workers-from-leaving-their-jobs/2012/12/05/ac795ece-3ef8-11e2-8a5c-473797be602c_story.html

Belarus’ ruler tries to solve economic problems by banning workers from leaving their jobs

Vladimir Dodonov wants to flee Belarus for neighboring Russia before it becomes illegal to leave his job at a wood-processing plant.

Belarus’ authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, has decided to stem an exodus of qualified workers to Russia, starting by banning those who work in wood-processing industries from quitting. Critics have compared the measure to serfdom and warned that it would only deepen the former Soviet republic’s economic troubles and fuel protests against Lukashenko.

Dodonov, 37, who earns the equivalent of $140 a month at the Borisovdrev plant, says he could make several times as much in Russia and would have left earlier if he hadn’t had to care for his ailing mother. “How can you survive on such a miserable salary?” he said this week. “Naturally, I’m thinking about leaving for Russia before they turn me into a slave.”

It could be too late.

“You will be sentenced to compulsory labor and sent back here if you leave,” Lukashenko warned Friday during a visit to the plant, located in the industrial city of Borisov, about 70 kilometers (some 45 miles) east of the Belarusian capital, Minsk.

Wow...and I thought I'd seen plenty of crazy news stories today already.

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