LABOUR-ROMANIA: Coal Miners Between Rock and Hard Place

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Wes Jonasson

PETROSANI, Romania, Feb 24 1999 (IPS) - Pity the poor coal miners of Romania. They work in appalling conditions – risking injury and even death – in antiquated mines that would be condemned in most other nations.

Worse still, the government does not them working. Romania’s coal mines simply are not profitable and, to meet conditions laid down by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the miners must give up and find something else to do which is less of a drain on the state budget.

Their leader Miron Cozma has been hit with a Supreme Court sentence of 18 years imprisonment; 7 years subsequent loss of citizenship; and 5 years of internal exile at a location other than his home of Petrosani, or Bucharest.

It appears to be aimed at removing Cozma from the political scene – indirect retaliation against the opposition Social Democratic Party of Romania (PDSR) whose formerly-communist leaders in 1990 and 1991 used the miners as government shock troops.

The government also is attempting to break trade union militancy in an ailing industry in Romania’s largest coal field whose workers tried to descend on Bucharest in January to press their demands for back pay and an improved future.

The situation between the miners and the center-right Christian Democrat National Peasants Party (PNTCD)-led coalition of Prime Minister Radu Vasile has now become a test of wills that the government seems determined not to lose.

The January protests ended with Vasile being forced to meet Cozma as he marched with his miners on Bucharest and sign an agreement to cancel plans for shutting two mine complexes.

The government was tested anew on 17 February at Stoenesti 150 kms from Bucharest. Some 2,000 miners who had driven down from Petrosani in cars and buses charged into 1,000 police and militiamen who stood their ground with tear gas grenades, rubber bullets, and truncheons.

When it was all over some three hours later, one miner lay dead and many dozens more were left to tend their wounds while Cozma was arrested.

The government had clearly won this latest round — the fifth confrontation since the December revolution of 1989.

The miner’s museum in Petrosani chronicles the hard life and times of the miners. Given two disastrous world wars, a world depression, and 45 years of communism, upheaval and repression – hardship seems almost two simple a word to use in describing the life of Jiu miners.

Still, they brag how in 1978 they all downed tools against the dictator Ceausescu; that they were the first dissidents. A Jiu valley miner is traditionally a fighter.

February is bitter cold in Petrosani; and the Jiu River runs black from the run-off of coal processing plants. A mean narrow street runs to Dalja mine on the outskirts of the town — one of 30 mines in the valley.

On either side are small, one storey hovels said to be more than 100-years-old which had been build by German Saxons. They are miner’s homes but most of the 20,000 workers live in cramped communist-style, 3-4 room apartments – badly constructed dwellings that appear to be ready to fall apart.

The town is similarly depressing despite the surrounding mountains; with little to offer besides ubiquitous pizza parlors, discos, and bars where men and their women shoot pool and drink “tuica” – a cheap, powerful brandy made from plums.

The first 30 metres into Dalja mine is slippery with ice. Then sloping down, one must walk carefully on broken planks through a maze of air vents, electric and pneumatic cables, rail tracks, around heaps of rock and machinery through mud and water until finally you arrive at the elevator shaft.

Without a light, it is pitch dark. An ancient, creaking, cable car descends to a lower level. There, after some turns, you continue on to another elevator to the 500 metre level.

As you meet other miners everyone exchanges the traditional words of good luck, “Noroc Bun!” They need it because the Jiu coal mines are among the most dangerous in the world!

We continue on to the three meters high, rounded rock face where a crew — “brigada” are busy boring holes to place sticks of “flashless” dynamite. The pneumatic drill chatters away in the arms of a worker who looks to be in his late teens. No photographs are permitted because of the possible presence of gas – methane.

The men, stripped to the waist and covered with dust, are all concentration because the ten or so meters of tunnel that they have drilled since the beginning of the week is still unbraced. My engineer escort, Nicolae Craciun, had crossed him- self coming down.

As an university student, he and military conscripts had been forced to work underground. He had once been trapped behind fallen rock for some hours before he and others were rescued.

A spokesman for the National Pitcoal Company of Petrosani (CNH). Valeriu Butulescu, says that if the Jiu mines were located in West Europe they would be closed for reasons of safety alone – fatality statistics are worse than in China.

Because of lack of investment technology is old, leading to relatively low production. Even a Czech, or Polish mine, Butulescu says, produces 400 man tons per year; whereas Jiu’s output is only 150. He said the coal is not of high quality — containing as it does ash, sulphur and rock.

Salary scales range from Lei 1,300,000 (USD 110) a month to 4,500,000 (USD 385) for managers. The 10,000 underground workers make over USD 200 a month — more than surface employees — and engineers are paid more.

Thus, the man who goes down the pit makes twice the national average. Few miners take much satisfaction in this, however, because high inflation has taken a steady toll of their pay packets.

Two years ago CNH bought out some 18,000 employees on a sliding scale of 20, 15, 12 months pay if they would leave mining but there was no effort at retraining, or relocation.

Many left the valley, but thousands of others remained – having now gone through their money – adding to the numbers of unemployed and the feeling of despair that pervades Petrosani.

In conversations with reporters a few days before his arrest, Cozma gave the impression that he has not yet found his place politically. He helped National Salvation Front President Ion Iliescu clear student dissidents off of the streets in June 1990 and helped to bring down Prime Minister Petre Roman in 1991 – removing Iliescu’s main competitor.

He made the mistake of running as an Independent for the Senate in 1996 — lacking 4,000 votes — when his tally of 36,000 would have easily carried him into the assembly. Last year, he flirted briefly with the ultra-nationalist Romania Mare (Great Romania) party and then quit.

At some point, a pardon by President Constantinescu might be in the making — of course as part of a political deal.

But he does know coal. He went underground at age 16 and then educated himself to become an assistant engineer. He was elected union president in 1990. Cozma utterly dispises officials from Bucharest wearing expensive suits who try to tell them about coal mining.

He said that one such person even advised them to turn to growing mushrooms and strawberries. Cozma said he knows that the mines are on their last legs and that many must be shut down.

Perhaps not even the miner’s patron Saint Varvara can help remedy the situation.