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.