RUSSIA: Miners’ Strike Continues

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Andrei Ivanov

MOSCOW, Dec 5 1996 (IPS) - Most of Russia’s miners are still supporting an indefinite strike called by the Russian Coal Industry Workers’ Union (Rosugleprofsoyuz) on Tuesday.

The union says 161 of the country’s 189 mines and 27 of its 69 open pits stopped to protest about mounting wage arrears and poor working conditions. According to the national coal combine Rosugol that runs them, work has stopped at only 100 mines and 23 open pits.

Rosugleprofsoyuz chairman Vitali Budko, says miners are owed 2,600 billion roubles (468 million dollars) in back wages and 1,500 billion roubles (270 million dollars) in subsidies. A further 7,500 billion roubles (1.35 billion dollars) are owed by coal customers.

Power generators are the worst debtors — they owe 4,100 billion roubles, a 110 percent increase on the early 1996 level. Agriculture and associated industries owe 2,700 billion roubles, steel mills 640 billion roubles, and now independent former Soviet states, 26 billion roubles.

Russian Finance minister Alexander Livshits says all federal budget allocations have been paid and of the total debt in back wages the federal government is responsible for only 10 percent, or 260 billion roubles.

He says that a total of 7,600 billion roubles has been transferred to the coal industry from various sources including 1,300 billion roubles drawn from part of a World Bank loan.

Of this, 400 billion roubles was channelled through Rosugol and 900 billion roubles was given directly to the regions for the coal miners’ social needs.” The Kemerovo region received 430.6 billion roubles, Rostov region 108.2 billion roubles, Perm 50.5 billion roubles, and the Komi Republic 94.1 billion roubles.

In a last minute attempt to avert the strike government allocated 700 billion roubles as social support for coal mining enterprises. However, the deputy chairman of the Miners Union, Ivan Mokhnachuk, says this is merely a half-measure which cannot resolve all the problems.

“No solution to the social problems in the coal-mining regions is possible without the adoption of a state programme and its control by the top officials,” he insists.

Minister of labour and social development Gennady Melikyan says the strike will achieve nothing. “Such measures taken by Russian miners always have considerable political consequences,” he warns.

According to Rosugol head Yury Malyshev, the problems of the Russian coal industry are the result of sharp cuts in the state financing in the second half of this year.

He says the restructuring of the industry calls for great financial expenditure which is impossible without the support by the state, especially in such regions as Rostov, Vorkuta and the Kuzbass where state support accounts for about 40 percent of operational costs.

Apart from that, Malyshev said, Rosugol received only some 150 billion roubles from the budget, instead of the 800 billion roubles provided for by it.

As to the credit of 500 million dollars, granted to the industry by the World Bank and whose second tranche Rosugol expects to receive before the end of this year, all this will be used for the closing of unprofitable mines, the commissioning of new ones and for the social protection of the discharged workers.

“As a result, we shall fulfill all the terms of the granting of this credit and ease the load on the budget,” he told IPS.

There are considerable regional variations in the response to the strike. The Vorkuta coal miners’ union federation — always one of the most radical in its demands — fully supports indefinite action and demand for the federal government’s resignation.

Miners in the Kuznetsk basin are more actively supporting the protest action than they did in previous years. In Kemerovo more than 100 mines are taking part. Some 110,000 miners from the Rostov region are backing an indefinite strike and they are being joined by teachers, medical workers and pensioners who have not been paid their legitimately earned wages for several months.

Dismissal of the cabinet has also been demanded by the participants to the joint meeting of protest of coal miners and power engineering workers in Vladivostok. The meeting was attended by delegates of all enterprises affiliated to the regional Primorskugol and Dalenergo joint stock companies that run the mining and power operations in the far eastern Russian territory.

In Irkutsk, East Siberia, 10 coal quarries and two mines of the Vostsibugol joint-stock company stopped work for 24 hours as a token protest.

“The idea of an indefinite strike advanced by the Vorkuta coal miners’s union is unacceptable for us because in the Siberian conditions, where the temperature often drops to 30 degrees below zero, it is well-nigh fatal, explains Vladimir Solomin, chairman of the territory coal miners’ union committee.

Coal miners in Krasnoyarsk Territory did not go on strike and miners in the Southern Urals are vacillating. They all support the political demand of the federal government’s resignation, but not all of them are ready to suspend work.

Of the 10 coal mining enterprises of Chelyabinsk basin, only three went on strike and two quarries were closed because of adverse weather conditions. The only coal quarry in the Orenburg region decided to support the national strike.

The miners of the Neryungri open-pit mine in Southern Yakutia, which is considered the largest mining enterprise in Russia’s Far East, have stopped to supply coal to all their consumers and are currently taking care of the own town’s needs.

However it is possible that some of the coal will be exported as the miners have not had any problems in getting hard currency payments for exported. Stripping activities and coal extraction at Neryungri are continuing.

But in general, the miners’ patience is exhausted after several years of delayed payments and deteriorating working conditions.

“Miners will stop heating Russia for free”, warns union chairman Vitaly Budko.