Around the World: Russia

Dockworkers walk out

Dockworkers on Russia's Pacific coast staged a one-day walkout yesterday to demand pay rises to keep up with double-digit inflation.

Workers in Nakhodka and Vostochny in the Primorsky region, 9,500 km east of Moscow, massed in the ports to protest about lack of increases in wages for experienced workers.

Prices for everything from bread to fuel to apartments are soaring, and wages are not keeping pace as record prices for oil - Russia's biggest export - flood the country with petro-dollars.

(China Daily 06/09/2008 page6)