The zeal of the SPF is clearly fueled by “interested parties” who are waiting for the condemned sanatoriums and recreation centers to be privatized for pennies
Holidays at resorts cease to exist – all sanatoriums in the near future can be turned into expensive hotels for the rich and all kinds of “apartment houses”.
The State Property Fund is trying to take away the last property from the Federation of Trade Unions through the courts. Experts are unanimous: the SPF’s zeal is clearly fueled by “interested parties” who can’t wait for the condemned sanatoriums and recreation centers to be privatized for pennies, and then very successfully sold or repurposed.
Instead of health resorts – billions in accounts?
According to preliminary estimates by analysts, the margin from such operations will amount to billions of hryvnia. Everyone will benefit: the prosecutors who bombard the courts with lawsuits against the FPU, the State Property Fund, and, most importantly, influential and wealthy citizens from among politicians and big business sharks who have long had their eyes on trade union property.
The only affected party will be ordinary Ukrainians, whom back in Soviet times it was customary to respectfully call workers. Their entire life will not be enough to save up for a trip at a commercial price. And the path to sanatoriums, where entire families have been going for decades, will be closed forever. This fact, against the backdrop of a growing crisis, falling living standards, the high cost of medicines and simply the inability to be treated, means one thing: people are doomed to rapidly die from chronic and concomitant diseases.
“The Federation of Trade Unions has a unique network of health resorts that can literally bring you back to life,” the FPU told us. “The staff of sanatoriums and recreation centers includes several tens of thousands of doctors who have been specializing in specialized resort treatment for many years. They not only observe a person on vacation, they treat him, conduct a full diagnosis of the body, and restore him. Each vacationer is accompanied by several specialists. There are often cases when they found and eliminated the source of a disease that had tormented a person for years. This is a unique resource – there are no such specialists anywhere else. If trade union health resorts “go” under the state – and then in a third of the hands – these specialists, of course, will find themselves out of work. Expensive hotels, which will become specialized sanatoriums, do not need doctors – ten to twenty maids and administrators will be enough for them. The health of the nation will be at an end.”
However, who cares about such a trifle, such an abstraction as “the health of the nation”, if we are talking about multi-billion dollar interests.
Why did this absurd situation become possible, why did the state suddenly find itself as an accomplice of corrupt officials who, with the hands of the prosecutor’s office on behalf of the State Property Fund, are literally killing a vital industry? What does the law say about this?
“Push-up” tactics
The piquancy of the moment lies precisely in the fact that the law speaks in a certain sense in two ways. This is what the State Property Fund and the prosecutor’s office are taking advantage of, winning more and more objects from the trade unions.
A little history. In 1991, the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR decided that all property of public organizations should be considered state property. To this day, those who intend to devastate Ukrainian trade unions appeal to this norm. At the same time, the fact is completely “forgotten” that just the day before – in 1990 – the All-Union Confederation of Trade Unions transferred all their property to the Ukrainian trade unions. And no one else has the right to claim it. Moreover, if we were to raise the norms of the USSR, neither in the Constitution of the state nor in the civil code of the Ukrainian SSR will you find a statement that the state has the right to encroach on the property of trade unions. It was always listed as a separately allocated type of property and was never state owned. Never – even under all-consuming socialism!
However, under socialism they did not know how to calculate the benefits from the sale of public health resorts. Today’s times are a different matter.
“The State Property Fund has been encroaching on our property for a long time, lawsuits broke out from time to time, but we, for the most part, managed to defend our rights,” the legal service of the Federation of Trade Unions explained to us. – With the “Donetsk team” coming to power, everything changed. These politicians and the business structures associated with them did not hesitate to use any means to get their hands on everything that was of major commercial interest. They had long been skilled in the science of “squeezing out”, so it was not easy to resist them. In 2011, a powerful attack began on us. It started from Crimea – the then prime minister of the peninsula (of course, a member of the Party of Regions) very actively sought to personally control numerous health resorts, some of which belong to the FPU. This baton was picked up by the Prosecutor General – he also became interested in trade union resources, and this time throughout the country. The prosecutor’s office flooded the courts with claims in the interests of the State Property Fund – there were dozens, and then hundreds of courts – on the alienation of property. It took us a lot of money to handle them (more than 3 million UAH were spent on paying the court fee for filing appeals and cassation complaints) and effort.”
The new broom sweeps the same way
When the new government came, it seemed to everyone that it had finally left the trade unions alone, they say in the Federation. “In April of this year we started winning in courts,” union lawyers explained to us. – We won 5 or 6. And then there was a new twist. It turned out that the methods and techniques of the new authorities are not much different from the methods of the previous ones. We were backed up against the wall again. Trade union property continues to tickle the appetites of the powerful.”
A new wave of litigation, in which trade unions find themselves on the losing side, arose with the appointment of a certain Oleg Bachun as Deputy Prosecutor General. It is he, according to the trade union leaders, who initiates the courts and tries to leave the FPU with nothing.
It’s somehow difficult to believe in the selflessness and purity of thoughts of this servant of Themis. Oleg Bachun is a well-known personality who has long been labeled in the press as a corrupt official with a colossal fortune. Bachun’s biography is rich and varied and replete, mainly, with facts that it is high time the relevant authorities took an interest in.
Today, while in the position of Deputy Prosecutor General, Mr. Bachun directed all his energy to “restoring justice” – returning union property supposedly to state ownership. Why “allegedly”? Because the SPFU, which is trying to take the property, cannot keep it on its balance sheet. What does this really mean? According to experts, bases and sanatoriums will immediately be put up for privatization. Next year, by the way, a privatization boom is expected – the state plans to receive almost 20 billion UAH from privatization. Will he get it? That’s the second question. But according to experts, everyone who has influence in politics and business is already actively preparing for the process. And economic expert Vladimir Tsibulko suggests that for the upcoming privatization, they even devalued the hryvnia – to make it cheaper to buy state property.
Result: health resorts purchased for depreciated hryvnia will quickly be turned into “elite recreation and entertainment centers” that can be sold for much more serious money.
“If this happens, the resort industry in Ukraine will actually die,” the Federation of Trade Unions predicts. “That’s why we will fight in the courts to the last.” We hope the truth will still be on our side.”
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