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Vol. 82/No. 11 March 19, 2018
—ON THE PICKET LINE—
Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine
After walking out of work Feb. 14, coal miners in Donetsk region of
Ukraine, joined by family members, protest at company headquarters
during strike demanding payment of back wages.
Ukraine miners fight for back wages, raises, better conditions
Wage arrears owed to working people in Ukraine reached a staggering 2.37
billion hryvnia ($88 million) as of Jan. 1, a 33 percent increase over
the past year. About 80 percent is owed to workers in the mining and
heavy industry sectors, and nearly half affects the Ukraine
government-controlled parts of Donetsk and Luhansk.
On Feb. 14 workers in four Donetsk mines, part of the state-owned
Selydivvuhillia complex, had enough and a big majority of the 10,000
working there walked out. Miners at the Novogrodivka mine set up
round-the-clock picketing, stopping anybody from crossing the line.
Similar protests took place at the other three mines. After two days of
the strike, the government transferred 365 million hryvnia of the 945
million hryvnia owed to workers to state coal enterprises, 90 million of
which was earmarked for the Donetsk mines.
“We were given part of our money, but it’s just throwing dust in our
eyes,” 35-year-old miner Sergei Durov told ChannelNewsAsia on the picket
line in Novogrodivka. He explained how the government bosses try to keep
all information about the mine secret. “Nobody knows who we sell our
coal to, everything is surrounded by mystery,” he said.
The Moscow-backed separatist war launched against Ukraine after the
popular Maidan protests overthrew President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014
has meant many of the settlements in mine areas have been bombed, and
many businesses shut down. “We have no other jobs. If our mines are
closed, the towns are simply going to die,” miner Leonid Shebanov said.
“We are here to draw the attention of politicians to our situation.”
These actions followed a series of strikes last year throughout Ukraine,
including shipyard workers in Mykolayiv, coal miners in Lviv and Volyn,
and iron ore miners in the Dnepropetrovsk region, demanding payment of
back wages, raises and improved working conditions.
Workers at the four mines in Donetsk — Novogrodivka, Kotlyarevskoho,
Kurakhivka and Ukraina — sent a delegation of nine members and leaders
of the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine to Kiev, the
capital, to meet with the government and demand payment of all arrears.
When the government refused to pay any more, the delegation staged a
sit-in and hunger strike at the Ministry of the Energy and Coal
Industry. After nine days, when a number of the miners got ill, they
decided to end the hunger strike March 1.
“Our struggle was for miners’ rights and for justice,” Sergei Pavlov,
one of the nine unionists, said in statement. “We’ve attracted attention
to the problems of miners and state enterprises.”
— Emma Johnson
Workers celebrate victory in nine-month-long fight at Mears
MANCHESTER, England — After a nine-months battle, and more than 80 days
of strike protests, the 180 housing maintenance workers employed by the
contractor Mears won a 20 percent pay raise. Their main demand was to
end the wage differential of several thousand pounds between the Mears
workers and other housing maintenance workers here.
The deal means they will reach parity by 2020. Attacks on pensions,
working conditions and annual leave were withdrawn.
“The workforce has become more militant and united. We’re stronger to
stand up to the managers now,” UNITE union shop steward Bill Sinclair
told workers and supporters at a victory celebration at a Manchester pub.
The Labour Party-dominated Manchester City Council contracts out
maintenance work on 37,000 homes. In 2017 they shifted the contract on
over 13,000 of the units on the north side of the city to Mears. This
meant the 180 workers had a new boss, and their wages and working
conditions worsened.
Sue Abbott, chair of the board that manages all the flats, bragged about
the deal, saying, “Mears offers good value for money, with the preset
price of each repair job decreasing 3.01 percent.”
“That was meant to come out of our pockets,” said shop steward Bill Nugent.
UNITE provided strike pay to the workers, which strengthened their
ability to stick with the fight.
“We won because we stuck together,” Nugent told the Militant. “We didn’t
give up. We organized protests against the Manchester City Council, we
reached out to the tenants with information about our strike, and we
reached out to other Mears employees all over the country.”
— Dag Tirsén
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