https://themilitant.com/2019/02/23/coal-miners-in-ukraine-march-demanding-back-pay/
Coal miners in Ukraine march demanding back pay
By Janet Post
Vol. 83/No. 9
March 4, 2019
Coal miners and supporters protest in Lviv, Ukraine, Feb. 6, demanding
back pay. Some 4,000 of 12,000 miners in state-owned Lviv regional mines
belong to independent miners union.
Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine
Coal miners and supporters protest in Lviv, Ukraine, Feb. 6, demanding
back pay. Some 4,000 of 12,000 miners in state-owned Lviv regional mines
belong to independent miners union.
Over 350 coal miners and their supporters marched in Lviv, Ukraine, Feb.
6, protesting outside government offices. The miners, including members
of the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine (NPGU), were
demanding their unpaid wages for the last month and a half from the
Lvivvugillia state-owned mines.
The workers are owed 210 million hryvnia ($7.7 million). Some 4,000 of
the 12,000 miners in the Lviv region are members of the NPGU.
Union President Mykhailo Volynets told the Militant Feb. 8 that the
Ministry of Energy and the Coal Industry claims it cannot pay into the
miners’ health care fund. Volynets said that 60 percent of miners either
have black lung or have been injured in the mines.
In one of the Lvivvugillia mines, Stepova, eight miners died and 21 were
injured in March 2017 after a methane gas explosion and tunnel collapse.
At the time, Volynets told the media, “The government said they lacked
money to provide safety, to buy new equipment and modernize the mines.”
Volynets told the Militant that deteriorating conditions in the mines
are a result of “the ongoing war with the Russian Federation and
corruption in the Ukrainian government.”
“At the same time Ukraine miners aren’t being paid, the government is
spending money to import more coal from Russia, even though Ukraine has
huge coal resources,” he said. The Kyiv Post reported that imported coal
increased by 11 percent from 2017 to 2018. “And incredibly, 62 percent
of those imports — $1.7 billion worth — came from Russia, a country that
is waging war against Ukraine.”
For over two years miners in Ukraine’s state-owned coal industry both in
the Lviv and Donetsk regions have carried out strikes with
round-the-clock picketing, sat in at the mines, and blocked entrances to
mine bosses’ offices and roads leading toward the mines. They have
rallied outside parliament demanding the government pay them back wages.
The miners have won some back pay but still face unpaid wages.
NPGU was forged in 1989-91 in a wave of massive strikes and protests by
miners and other workers for higher pay and safer conditions. They also
raised political demands, which helped lead to an independent Ukraine.
Messages of solidarity for the Lviv miners can be sent to the
Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine, St. Velyka Vasylkivska
65, Office 39, Kiev 03150, Ukraine. Email: international-dep@xxxxxxxxxxx
On the Picket Line
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Carl Sagan
“Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind
and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says
everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the
fallibility of all the human beings involved?”
― Carl Sagan
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