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Hunting season opens for excavators’ votes

30 October, 00:00

On October 26, the central committee presidium of the Trade Union of Coal Miners had a session in Donetsk to discuss the union’s further actions, following the last week’s protest campaign. As Valery Mamchenko, union vice president, told The Day, in the course of this action power plants ran short of 140,000 tons of fuel and 40,000 tons of coke coal. The trade union claims that 148 coal mines (out of a total 180) in all coal-mining regions of Ukraine took part in the campaign.

It is no accident, of course, that this wave of strikes coincided with the speedup of the budget adoption process and oncoming cold, which could well make the government more flexible. It is quite easy to suppose that the minefield players have a lot of fans in political structures who want the diggers’ votes, as well as some financial potential which allows trade union activists to warm up and wind up the miners, if necessary, and to involve even some quite prosperous mines in the strike.

Yet, the bulk of the strikers seem to have grounds for discontent and to be prepared for uncompromising struggle. The miners demand, in particular, that their current wages, arrears (UAH 1.6 billion as of October 1 for all payments), and especially bills for the coal delivered to power plants be paid in full. The trade union is pressing the Cabinet of Ministers an the Ministry for Fuel and Energy to allocate additional central state funds primarily to support capital construction and safety measures in the coal mining industry. It is planned to hold the protest action in five stages. If the miners’ demands are not met within two weeks after the first two days of the action, a new strike will last as long as four days. Another two weeks later (if the demands are not satisfied) the miners will be ready for work stoppages with no time limit, halt deliveries of coal to five Ukrainian power plants and to picket the buildings of government bodies in Kyiv. If the demands have not been met by December 3, this country’s mines are supposed to come to a complete halt on December 17. According to Mr. Mamchenko, the strike’s first stage came off on schedule, despite some obstacles, and outdid all previous protest actions in terms of the daily quantity of coal not delivered. Up to now, the minimum required amount for electricity plants has never dropped, as Mr. Mamchenko told The Day, lower than 30,000 tons, i.e., less that a third of the daily extraction target.

Meanwhile, the Ministry for Fuel and Energy tries to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary is happening. Minister Stanislav Stashevsky does not think the miners’ strike is hampering the fuel-and-energy sector’s efforts to get ready for winter. In his words, the payment rate for the coal delivered has been 79% this year against 20% last year. Moreover, this indicator has risen to 97% in the last few months. “The Ministry for Fuel and Energy is doing what it is supposed to,” he said. However, The Day’s experts claim things are not so rosy. According to them, Mr. Stashevsky is really making an all-out effort to ward off a miners’ general strike. The ministry has established tight control over the payment of wages at every mine, with managers bearing personal responsibility for it. Those who fail are immediately called on the carpet by the ministry, and they know that the minister will not be soft.

This is why managers come to Kyiv only after they have settled accounts with their miners. The only question is where the money comes from. Often literally forced by the ministry, mine managers take out loans that they cannot repay. As a result, some mines have already been sued for bankruptcy, with others undergoing treatment and being run (illegally) by new management.

Mr. Stashevsky has thus set against himself a number of underground generals politically supported by the powerful financial and industrial groups of the Donbas. It will be recalled that it is they who control the production of coke coal, now stripped of state subsidies. Is it not here that we should look for the real roots of the miners’ autumnal offensive? It is not ruled out that one of the reasons why the strike is assuming its current shape is the position of the oblast state administration which, although wielding otherwise great clout in the region, has not yet intervened to solve this acute labor conflict. The oblast administration is more concerned about its own growing conflict with the Ministry for Fuel and Energy. Yesterday’s meeting between trade union leaders and the government was supposed to determine the further actions of the mineworkers. But even before the last presidium session Mr. Mamchenko told The Day that its decisions would be made only after taking into account that so far there are no improvements in the government’s position.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Anatoly Kinakh has already met some union representatives two weeks before the strike.

The two sides were not happy at all about the attempts, as the union’s press release says, to paint in rosy hues the ongoing preparations for winter (in particular, the fuel and energy authorities claimed that Ukraine did not need to store the planned 4 million tons of power-station coal and could make do with 2.2 million tons due to the low ash content of its coal).

It turned out that the state of affairs in the fuel and energy sector is far from sunny. Trade union leader Viktor Turmanov told the premier about the meetings he had with trade union activists and coal-extraction team leaders during his tour of the mining regions. In addition, Mr. Kinakh has received dozens of telegrams from coal trade union officials demanding that the accumulated problems of the industry be solved urgently. As a result, both sides see the situation in preparing for winter as critical. According to the trade union’s information, the coal- mining cities’ public utilities, still in fact subsidized by the cash- strapped mines, are just eking out an existence, with the supplies of household fuel in decline.

It should be noted that the miners’ demands, widely considered as an attempt to snatch somebody else’s piece of pie, are based on such a serious legal instrument as the Ukraine’s official coal program. Under it, the 2002 state budget is to allocate UAH 6 billion to the coal mining industry. But Mr. Turmanov had predicted that this program was adopted as a political document and thus would not be fulfilled. Indeed, when the cabinet drafted the 2002 budget, it failed to include this level of funding. Now the Trade Union of Coal Miners is more modest: Mr. Turmanov thinks that, to produce 80 million tons of coal next year, the state budget should include UAH 3.285 billion for coal miners, almost half the figure envisioned by the program.

Today many political forces would like to offer the miners state budgetary support. The very presence of a miner’s trade union in any election bloc makes the latter more than influential, even without helmet-beating vigils in front of Verkhovna Rada. The bloc based on the Regions of Ukraine seems to be able to stand a good chance of winning this kind of bloodless victory. Fatherland is trying, clearly and successfully, to privatize the NPGU, another mining trade union association.

Meanwhile, the national leadership is well aware that the political, economic, and social situation in the coal areas should not become the object of political speculation on the eve of the elections, for this could have a far-reaching effect. After his tour of Donetsk oblast in late August, President Leonid Kuchma demanded that the Cabinet of Ministers increase funds to be allocated to the coal-mining industry under the bill, On the State Budget of Ukraine for 2002, taking into account the need to clear arrears in social payments and to update the equipment of mine rescue teams. The government should also ensure prompt payments for the electricity consumed by the mining associations of the eastern Donbas. Moreover, the government must do something to pay off last year’s arrears in the form of lawsuits for damages incurred by mineworkers and lump-sum payments along with earmarking funds for safety measures in the mines.

It is very dangerous to tear asunder the miners’ blanket that literally covers this country with heat. This has been demonstrated by previous years’ experience. As has already been announced, the problems of coal mines were addressed recently at an interdepartmental meeting, where Yevhen Marchuk, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC), supported the idea of reestablishing the Ministry for the Coal Mining Industry. “I am going to keep this urgent issue under control... I am sure the problem of a coal-mining ministry will be solved,” he stated. Mr. Marchuk believes that reestablishment of the Ministry for Coal Mining Industry requires a “well-balanced, highly-skilled, and expert” approach. According to the NSDC, Ukraine has halved its production of coal in the last ten years, with the work injury and death rate remaining on the same level. “The situation is dramatic,” Mr. Marchuk concluded. “This is now a problem of national security rather than of a certain sector. We have approached the line where the assessment of action or inaction can be done not only in criminal courtrooms. Political and staff assessments must be made throughout the whole structure of government from top to bottom. The current situation in the state cannot be allowed to continue.”

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