I hope they succeed.
Evan
-----Original Message-----
From: Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2018 10:42 AM
To: blind-democracy
Subject: [blind-democracy] Coal miners in Ukraine occupy mine to demand
unpaid wages
https://themilitant.com/2018/11/17/coal-miners-in-ukraine-occupy-mine-to-demand-unpaid-wages/
Coal miners in Ukraine occupy mine to demand unpaid wages
By Janet Post
Vol. 82/No. 44
November 26, 2018
Coal miners sitting in underground at Kapustina mine since Oct. 19 in
eastern Ukraine. They are demanding long-unpaid back wages, a big issue
for miners across the country.
Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine
Coal miners sitting in underground at Kapustina mine since Oct. 19 in
eastern Ukraine. They are demanding long-unpaid back wages, a big issue
for miners across the country.
Fourteen coal miners at the Grigoriya Kapustina mine in Pryvillia, in
the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, are sitting in underground,
protesting not being paid for months. The action began Oct. 19 when a
total of 33 miners stopped work.
They are demanding wages owed from June to September, and for some
months in 2015 and 2017. The miners are members of the Independent Trade
Union of Miners of Ukraine (NPGU). The mine is near the city of
Lisichansk where fierce battles were fought between the Ukrainian army
and pro-Russian separatists in 2014.
NPGU chair Mykhailo Volynets said Oct. 29 that if the debt to the miners
isn’t paid “protests will rapidly spread to other mines and
enterprises.” He encouraged miners from Kryvyi Rih and other regions to
join the miners in solidarity.
“Many of the problems in the state-owned mines are caused by the
government — by the decisions of the Ministry of Energy and Coal
Mining,” Volynets told the Militant in a phone interview Nov. 12. “Money
allocated for miners’ wages, safety protections and better equipment is
used for other things.” He said the miners are demanding the resignation
of the head of the ministry.
“When I visited the mine and went down to talk to the strikers, I didn’t
ask them which ones were members of the NPGU and which were not. But
some of the miners who were not members asked to join the union,”
Volynets said.
The union is providing water, food and medicine, and townspeople are
sharing what they have with the miners. Some of the original 33 workers
had to leave the underground strike because of health and family issues,
Volynets said, but they also rotate in as part of maintaining 14
strikers in the mine. They’re determined to stay.
Miners at state-owned Lvivvuhillia mine in western Ukraine haven’t been
paid since August. They rallied and launched a hunger strike at the mine
offices Nov. 12, Volynets said.
Protests demanding back wages also took place at the Selydivvuhillia and
Myrnohradvuhillia mines in the Donetsk region and Novovolynsk in Volyn.
“These people work in such extremely difficult and dangerous conditions,
but their wages aren’t high,” Volynets said in a letter issued publicly
by the union. He said that as of Nov. 1 wages owed to miners at
state-mining enterprises total 1.2 billion hryvnia ($43 million).
While miners are owed wages in both eastern and western Ukraine,
Volynets told the Militant, “the wage debt is higher in the east, which
is closer to the military conflict.”
The union announced Nov. 2 that part of 300 million hryvnia the cabinet
of ministers had agreed after earlier protests to pay on back wages
would be transferred to miners’ accounts. But that does not include pay
for other workers, including cleaners and boiler house workers, many of
whom are women who get lower wages.
Some of these workers from the Kurakhivska mine technological complex
organized a rally that day demanding five months back pay.
“They are having trouble paying for their utilities and electricity,
which costs almost as much as in Europe,” said Volynets. “The union has
asked the government not to cut off their electricity.”
“We reiterate our full support and solidarity with the miners at the
state-owned coal mining enterprises,” Valter Sanches, general secretary
of the IndustriALL Global Union, said in an Oct. 30 statement, “and we
join you in calling on the Government of Ukraine to pay in full wages in
arrears without further delay.”
“The NPGU supports all spontaneous actions by the miners, whether or not
the workers are in the union,” said Volynets. “To be a member of an
independent trade union takes courage.”
Through strikes and other protests, coal and iron ore miners have forced
the government to make some concessions, which has strengthened the union.
The 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,
combined with political demands, including an end to domination by
Moscow. These actions helped lead to an independent Ukraine.
Messages of solidarity for the Kapustina miners strike 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
In This Issue
Front Page Articles •Solidarity, struggle is road to unite the working class
•US troops out of Korea, Middle East, Afghanistan!
•Marriott strike makes gains, picketing goes on at 19 hotels
•Saudi, Tehran fueled war in Yemen brings death, famine
•Amnesty for all immigrants in US, cancel Honduran debt to US banks
•Messages protest Florida prison censorship against the ‘Militant’
Feature Articles •‘Greatest crisis of bourgeois order in our lifetimes’
Also In This Issue •Are acts of Jew-hatred on the rise in the US today?
•Coal miners in Ukraine occupy mine to demand unpaid wages
•Islamic State targeted Christians to terrorize and divide Iraq working
people
•Music, art part of revival of life in Mosul after defeat of IS
•Fall 2018 Militant Subscription Campaign (week 5)
•Socialist Workers Party 2018 Fall Fund Drive (week 5)
Books of the Month •‘Uncle Sam is all over the world, but won’t act for
our rights here’
25, 50 and 75 years ago
Letters
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_________________________________________________________________
Isaac Asimov
“Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in
telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life
after death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved
negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?"
Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement,
and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no
matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and
more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the
evidence will have to be.”
― Isaac Asimov
