RUSSIA: Miners Dig in, Yeltsin Flip-Flops

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sergei Strokan

MOSCOW, Feb 1 1996 (IPS) - Angry Russian coal miners Thursday began a potentially devastating nationwide strike over unpaid wages that could unravel a fragile economic reform programme already undermined by recent political changes.

Early reports said most of Russia’s 18 coal-producing regions were affected. And teachers – who have also not been paid for long periods – threatened to join the protest, raising the prospect of a massive wave of industrial unrest.

The strike began despite attempts by the embattled government of President Boris Yeltsin, outnumbered in the Duma (Parliament) by opponents of reform, to entice the miners with offers to meet their longstanding grievances.

With the victory of communists in the December parliamentary elections catapulting their leader Guennady Zuyganov into being the favourite for next June’s presential elections, Russia is in for a period of “chaos and contradiction”, says Sergei Bobrovsky, business editor of the weekly ‘Moscow News’.

“The government’s efforts to present itself as reformist to the world coupled with populist moves threatening financial stability could prove self-defeating,” he told IPS. “They could lead to undermining the hard achieved basis for economic growth and clear the path for Communists.”

Trillions of rubles in unpaid wages are owed to the miners. They had picketed parliament all of last week. They made bonfires in front of government headquarters. In public statements, their leaders said they were in no mood to trust the authorities.

Yeltsin made a desperate effort to placate. Authorities offered to pay the miners 600 billion rubles (127 million dollars) in back wages. The President issued a decree setting up a special fund to ensure public servants are paid on time.

Vitaly Budko, leader of the union that represents most of the country’s 580,000 miners, reacted in contemptuous terms to the Yeltsin offer.

“Thank you very much, Boris Nikolayevich, but we asked for a meeting with you long ago and you could have heard our demands a month earlier,” declared Budko. “Then we could reach a compromise to suit us all. But now we finally decided to go on strike… as is the only way to show that we don’t want to suffer any more.”

Budko indicated he expected 7O percent of miners to heed the strike call. Previous attempts at nationwide miners’ strikes have drawn a patchy response. Thursday, reports from the major mining regions of Vorkuta, Rostov and Kuzbass said the strike call was being heeded.

In the previous strike threats issued by unions – including the one made Oct. 1O last year – the government apepared to have the upper hand. A cushion was provided by large coal stocks.

This time the situation is different. Some regions in Western Siberia and the Far East have coal supplies for just a couple of days. They would be left with no electricity if the miners’ protest continues.

“Even today in the Far East and Khabarovsk regions, electricity is not available on average six to nine hours a day,” said Alexander Yevtushenko, Russia’ first deputy fuel and energy minister.

Yeltsin’s says his special fund “would contain enough funds to pay everyone in the country one month’s salary”. Some observers see the move as politically motivated – done with an eye on the presidential elections slated for Jun. 16.

The president did not indicate where the money would come from. Mikhail Zadornov, influential head of the State Duma budget committee, believes Yeltsin’s move is crafted for electoral appeal. A member of the Duma’s liberal Yabloko faction, Zadornov was quoted by ‘Interfax’ news agency as saying, “Yeltsin has very seriously shattered his authority in the eyes of ordinary Russians”.

Addressing a meeting of regional officials last week Yeltsin voiced two contradictory ideas. “The most important task for Russia and its regions is fully fledged protection of the social and economic rights of the people,” he said.

Then he added: “We will not allow anyone to turn back reforms or interrupt them.”

Earlier last week Yeltsin had announced other potentially budget-busting decrees to finance reconstruction in Chechnya and to boost pensions and students grants. Such pledges, if enacted, would almost certainly derail the tight budget, approved by the State Duma last December and make inflation spiralling.

Harnessing inflation has been touted by the government as its main reformist accomplishment in 1995. Zadornov said Yeltsin’s pledge of some five billion USD to Chechnya was “economically and politically absurd”. His decrees on pensions and students grants violated parliamentary prerogative.

In the end, the offer of largesse for the miners came too late – and may have come too late to forestall teachers in their expressed intention to stage a three-day strike over back pay.

According to the strike’s Coordinating Committee, salary arrears to schoolteachers in only three out of 87 Russia’s regions have reached more than 115 billion rubles. More than 250,000 teachers are expected to take part in the strike while in particularly cash-hungry regions like Kemerovo schools have been already closed since Jan. 10 and are going to stay closed indefinitely.

Education workers have been threatening to stage a nationwide strike since last spring. Only last month more than 22,000 schoolteachers across the country held a one-day warning strike to protest low salaries.

After Feb. 15 – the end of winter recess in high schools – they may be joined by university professors, who experience the same problems. In St.-Petersburg high school teachers have threatened to “recreate Paris disturbances of ’68 on the banks of the Neva” if their wages are not paid by Feb. 3.