After the primary organization of the Belarusian Independent Trade Union (BNP) was another time and again denied a legal address, Nikolai Zimin, the Chairman of BNP asked Oleg Slizhevsky, the Minister of Justice of the Republic of Belarus to explain the mechanism for obtaining a legal address for a trade union organization set up at a state-owned enterprise. The answer of the state official has persuaded the union leader that without the loyal attitude of the factory administration registration of new trade union organizations is practically impossible.

According to Mr Zimin, there are contradictions in the normative documents, which define the procedure for establishment and operation of trade unions, the website of the BNP reports.

"The Law 'On Trade Unions' allows creating and registering trade union organizations, but the Resolution of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Belarus No. 48 of August 30, 2005, in its turn, makes it impossible to create a single new independent trade union organization (according to the Resolution, a primary organization needs a legal address in order to get registered, which is granted by the employer, but only on his or her own free will, – note of the Editor). We can state for sure that in our country we have a permissive procedure for creating new organizations," said the trade union leader. "Thus, the Law permits, but the normative act restricts the Law. In my opinion, this is an apparent contradiction, which must be eliminated. Firstly, there are no clear mechanism and a list of documents allowing us to register a new trade union organization without problems. Secondly, to obtain a legal address, we need a loyal attitude of the boss of the enterprise. Roughly speaking: if the boss doesn't want to have a trade union organization, it will never appear."

The correspondence of the BNP with the authorities on this issue lasts for over a year; and all the appeals to the Presidential Administration, the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Justice have brought no fruit: the answer is the same all the time – there are no reasons to change the procedure of registration of trade union organizations.

Based on the answer received by the union from the Ministry of Justice, Nikolai Zimin came to the conclusion that "today, the conditions have been set up in our country that prohibit creating trade union organizations."

"This means a violation of democratic norms and the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus," the website of the BNP quotes its leader as saying.