Protests against Russian Labor Code.

["Ken Hanly" <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

OPPONENTS OF NEW LABOR CODE BLOCK STREET IN CENTRAL MOSCOW

 MOSCOW. July 5 (Interfax) - Between 1,500 and 2,000 opponents of
the adoption of a new Labor Code blocked Okhotny Ryad street at 8:50
a.m. while picketing the State Duma building, Thursday.
 The picketers had been allowed to gather near Hotel Moskva, but the
communists broke the police cordon and blocked the street, sources in
Moscow law-enforcement agencies told Interfax on Thursday.
 Members of the youth movement Marching Together and of the trade
unions, who support the new Labor Code, remained near the hotel
building.
 The demonstrators, carrying red banners of the former Soviet Union,
are protesting against the adoption of the Land and Labor codes. The
lower house of parliament on Thursday plans to debate seven drafts of
the Labor Code in its first reading, which were proposed by the
tripartite conciliatory commission, by the government and by individual
deputies.
 Security guards have blocked the main entrance to the State Duma
building, and deputies and the staff are entering the building from
Georgiyevsky Pereulok.
 The demonstrators are also demanding the resignation of the
government. They are holding up posters reading: "No to Oppressive Labor
Code!", "The Land is our Mother, Mother Cannot be Sold!" "Down with the
Putin-Kasyanov Government!" "Down with the Ministers-Capitalists!"
 The demonstrators are also singing songs sung during the 1917
October Revolution.
 Representatives of independent trade unions formed a group some
distance from the picketers. They are chanting "Down with Shmakov!" (the
chairman of the Federation of Independent Russian Trade Unions.) They
are also protesting the coordinated draft of the Labor Code as well as
the variant proposed by the government.