More than 1,000 strikers demand more state funding for beleaguered industry
About 1,000 coal miners from Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts picketed the Cabinet of Ministers building in downtown Kyiv on Nov. 13 demanding back pay and increased government funding for the downtrodden industry.
The action was sanctioned by the Union of Coal Industry Workers (UCIW), which claims to represent a membership of more than 500,000.
Valery Mamchenko, deputy head of the UCIW, told the Post that his union is demanding that state financing of Ukraine’s mines be boosted from Hr 2 billion to at least Hr 3 billion next year.
A day after the demonstration, Prime Minister Anatoly Kinakh told union officials that the government would earmark at least Hr 3 billion for the troubled sector.
But parliament still must approve the expediture. Deputies were scheduled to vote on the 2002 budget Nov. 15.
Mykhailo Volynets, the head of the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine (ITUMU), which frequently opposes the UCIW, said his union had “no other option” than to push for more funding for the state-owned coal mines. The union also wants the government to prevent Donetsk oligarchs from controlling the mines and reaping their profits.
Volynets and Mamchenko said that if parliament fails to pass the budget Nov. 15, their organizations would continue their demonstrations.
The mining industry has nearly collapsed since 1991, prompting numerous strikes to force the government to pay back wages, which have been reduced by inflation to between $50 and $75 per month.
The nation’s mines are among the world’s most deadly. More than 3,000 miners have died in mines in the past decade, with 238 killed this year alone, Volynets said.
Reforms in the sector are a key to securing lending from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Both lenders have repeatedly recommended that the nation close unprofitable mines.
Coal miners are also plagued by management problems and disputes between the two unions.
Volynets accuses the UCIW of compromising miners’ interests by allowing itself to be controlled by the so-called “Donetsk Clan,” a group of influential businessmen in eastern Ukraine.
Volynets said large Donbas holding companies, including the Industrial Union of Donbas (IUD), Donetsk Industrial Union (DIU) and Danko, are basically middlemen who have monopolized the energy sector to control the mines by engaging in complicated barter transactions.
As result, the mines have been left unprofitable, and the state with the debt.
The two unions rarely see eye to eye.
“We are in solidarity on this issue,” said Volynets, whose union has 50,000 members. “But why don’t they oppose corruption in the industry?”
UCIW’S Mamchenko denies that the region’s so-called Donetsk Clan controls his union. He said his union is funded solely by donations from members, each of whom donates 1 percent of his salary to the union.
He refuses to blame the middlemen firms for the problems at the mines.
“They have no money to invest in the mines,” he said. “The state should finance the technical upgrades and investments in the mines.”
Just this year, the Industrial Union of Donbas, a loss-making company which is second in revenues in Ukraine according to Invest Gazeta’s Top 100 ranking of Ukrainian companies for 2000, spent Hr 126 million to purchase a controlling stake in Donbas-based Khartsyzsk Pipe Plant in a privatization tender.
