Railway carriage builders appreciate Vladimir Putin's generous gift of 3 billion roubles.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited the Tver Railway Carriage Factory yesterday, and gave it financial assistance. In the opinion of Kommersant's special correspondent ANDREI KOLESNIKOV, the employees of the factory came away from the meeting with the Prime Minister with one pervading feeling: no matter how much the Government gives out during the financial crisis, it must give out still more.
The visit included a meeting with the factory employees, but no formal conferences. All the decisions concerning the fate of the Tver Railway Carriage Factory had been made, and all the Prime Minister had left to do was to hear the employees' comments and announce the decisions.
The anti-crisis psychotherapy session (the third over the past month or two) administered by Vladimir Putin looked very much like the previous ones. A seat had been prepared for him in the centre of a circle formed by two, three or four rows of chairs. The Prime Minister sat in a swivel chair so that every employee could look into Mr Putin's eyes at any moment, and discover in them what he, the factory employee, now lacked (in other words money).
"I am aware that you have many problems in the region. Don't burden me with all of them," said Mr Putin. Not that the factory workers intended to waste their time on that. They were concerned only about the problems of their own enterprise, which shortly before the start of the financial crisis completed a 6.1 billion-rouble modernisation. The money had of course been borrowed, and the plant has no way to repay it. So the carriages the Tver Railway Carriage Factory is prepared to build could only be bought by people and organisations that have much money now that the financial crisis is on in the country.
At least there were no such people in the workshop where Vladimir Putin talked with employees, watched by head of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov and Governor of the Tver Region Dmitry Zelenin, all of whom were sitting some distance away. Vladimir Putin explained that the Government had already allocated 3.1 billion roubles for the plant and "this is enough not to stop production and not to lay off employees."
"Yes," agreed the trade union boss of the Tver Railway Carriage Factory, Viktor Koltsov. "You have reassured us that the process of layoffs will be halted".
The plant's trade union leader was choosing his words carefully. One felt that a trade union leader should not be so choosy with words when talking to the country's chief employer. But it only seemed so.
"Nevertheless, the process of contraction is going on," the trade union boss continued. "Four hundred people have been laid off between December and March, and another 629 will be redundant, and yet another 650 people are to be dismissed."
"All in all you have 10,000 employees?" the Prime Minister inquired, as if figuring out how many more employees could be laid off (8,000).
"Yes. And those who stayed have been switched to a three-day workweek... Those who are paid by the unit produced had their wages reduced by three times."
"But they used to earn up to 34,000 roubles," Mr Putin said, displaying that his command of hard facts is undiminished by the financial crisis. "High wages."
"Yes," Mr Koltsov agreed. And suddenly he could not control himself and burst out, "We are used to working. We are used to making these wonderful carriages."
"Very good carriages, indeed," the Prime Minister conceded.
He too was choosing his words carefully. I had the impression that the Prime Minister and the factory workers were afraid of each other. Handing out the money was apparently not the Prime Minister's main task (he could have done that by issuing an executive order without leaving Moscow). He was pursuing a more important task: to give these people a feeling of security. He wanted to give them an illusion. He apparently thought that they deserved it.
The illusion was designed for an entirely concrete purpose: after Vladimir Putin's departure the city should sleep calmly (although it had no special reason to be calm).
Vladimir Putin said something to the trade union leader and laughed louder than usual, hoping that all those present would join him (but they didn't).
"We know that the budget is being amended," Mr Koltsov continued. "We don't need money. We simply hope to get orders for our carriages... We hope that Russian Railways will get the money and some of the proceeds from these orders will reach us."
"So you do need money, after all?" said Vladimir Putin, laughing again. And again nobody joined him.
"What will we do in the future, in 2010?" asked Vladimir Kireyev, a grinder from the tools workshop. "We have modernised the equipment. We have fitted production to use certain parts. Where do we go from here? Are we going to see the good equipment standing idle?"
The man was talking with increasing irritation, as if the Government and the Prime Minister personally owed him something, and to the whole plant because they had acquired a lot of debt and modernised everything in response to a promise from Russian Railways to buy new carriages from the plant. But then the financial crisis broke out, the plant now owes everyone, and these people looked at the Prime Minister as if he owed them something. The psychotherapy session did not get off to a good start.
"You see," the grinder said, still with irritation, "you cannot assemble classic models on a Priora line."
Mr Putin could of course afford to look irascible. A psychotherapist gets irritated only when it is part of the method of treatment. However, he thought it was not right for him not to react to such harsh tone. Apparently he knew that this was the way a factory worker would talk to the Prime Minister during a financial crisis.
"You seem to have worked in a lot of places... But you do produce a quality product..." said Mr Putin, thinking he should again praise the factory, although his good humour was fast abandoning him.
"Absolutely. Perhaps we did something wrong," the grinder admitted, "we all make mistakes sometimes... this is not the point, to put it crudely, you are the state."
Mr Putin laughed. "More precisely, the Government," Vladimir Kireyev corrected himself.
"No," the Prime Minister said. "The state is all of us." The grinder looked at him reproachfully as if he was itching to say: "You and I both know well who is the state. The state is you." But he checked himself.
"And there is something you can do," the grinder continued. "You could agree that we build rolling stock for Kazakhstan and Belarus."
"By the way, that is not a bad idea," the Prime Minister said. "But the amount of debt on Belarus..."
"Is too much," the grinder agreed.
"Yes, it is becoming threatening," the Prime Minister confirmed, "But the idea is not bad... On the way here I contacted colleagues from our financial agencies. Actually Kazakhstan wants to buy 20 carriages from us in 2009. In 2010, Azerbaijan wants ..."
"A little bit here, and a little bit there," the grinder sounded more animated now.
"They want to get a loan from Russian financial institutions..." the Prime Minister said. "We will think about it. Really, it is not a bad idea."
"Five hundred carriages a year," another employee said, "is a disaster for the plant. We need to make at least 900 carriages to break even... I hope we won't be buying them from China."
"By the way, I gave directions not to buy a single carriage from China," the Prime Minister looked more alert. "The Transport Ministry intended to... they are cheaper. Nevertheless, those were freight and semi-freight carriages..."
"By the way, the Neva Express episode showed that we make quality carriages," the employee added.
"Why is it that inside our own country we have trusted oral promises?" Another employee wondered. "We trusted that we would spend money and they (Russian Railways - A.K.) would buy our carriages." The factory workers themselves seemed surprised that some agreements that had been made on high and would not interest them under normal conditions suddenly became vital.
"Oral agreements of course are significant," the Prime Minister said, apparently feeling that as one of the people who are as good as his word, he should give credit to oral agreements, "but you cannot put words in a file. We forbade Russian Railways to raise tariffs during the financial crisis. Their operations have dropped by a third: that is a crisis too."
"Kudrin says the crisis won't last long," another factory worker said vengefully. "He said it would last 10 to 20 to 50 years... "
"Mr Kudrin (Russian Finance Minister - A.K.)," said the Prime Minister, laughing again, although he was less and less inclined to laugh or even to smile, "is under some stress, and he is trying to protect himself against possible pressure by talking like that..."
Vladimir Putin stood firm in defending Alexei Kudrin, just as the latter was firmly guarding the reserve fund during the several good years. The fund that was being built up only to be thrown to the winds now.
Meanwhile, Mr Putin produced one pre-prepared trump cards after another. He said "the problem with subsidising two-thirds of the interest rate can be handled..."
"If we find that we are ready to co-finance, that is important: the credit rate will be, let us count together..."
The factory employees stated moving their lips along with the Prime Minister, which meant that the psychotherapy was beginning to work.
"Between 10 and 14%. That's good," Vladimir Putin said.
"Good," the factory workers said in a chorus.
Another employee complained about the City Duma, which he described as clowns from a travelling circus (two of the clowns were sitting in the circle - A.K.). Half of the City Duma are in jail... "that was the previous Duma," one of the clowns corrected.
"Do you know what they were convicted of?" The Prime Minister asked promptly. "Because they had agreed to an incredible tariff rise, they were in collusion with the businesses".
"Let the Governor select the Mayor," somebody says.
"As regards direct appointment," Mr Putin said, "that is connected with our international obligations..."
"Democracy..." one of the factory workers pronounced slowly and with disgust.
"Yes," the Prime Minister sighed.
Towards the end of the meeting, Mr Putin promised to give out another 3 billion roubles to Russian Railways to buy carriages from the Tver Railway Carriage Factory, and then closed the meeting.
"If you happen to pass by six months from now, make a point of asking whether the money has reached us," a grinder named Kireyev asked him.
"By all means," the Prime Minister replied, with a note of challenge in his voice.
Later I asked the grinder whether he had expected more from the meeting.
"Of course," he replied, and several people standing nearby agreed with him. "It's a small amount... We have estimated that it still won't pay for 900 carriages."
"But you have another 3 billion," I reminded them.
"Still we won't break even," said Mr Kireyev confidently. "We are told to cut our costs. Didn't they ask us to use expensive materials to make our carriages?"
They left in the same mood as they were in before: a sense that everybody owe them more than they can give.
