A column of a thousand miners marched along Khreshchatyk on June 17, this time headed for the train station. The miners were leaving Kyiv after making sure that the government’s Hr 69 million had been deposited in their personal accounts.
Oleh Tsymmer, deputy head of the joint strike committee at Pavlohradvuhillia (Pavlohrad Coal) Trust, who headed the victorious column told The Day that this payment, the better part of the Hr 89 million wage arrears, was made as stipulated by a joint protocol signed by strikers’ and Cabinet representatives.
10% of the Trust’s coal extracted is to be earmarked for paying off the remaining arrears.
Volodymyr Martynov, Secretary of the Central Committee, Ukrainian Coal Industry Workers’ Union, coordinating the unlimited picketing of the Presidential Administration, says the government made this move to torpedo the miners’ movement. In his words. the overall debt the state owes to the coal industry amounts to Hr 2.3 billion. By giving this “token money” to the miners who shout the loudest, the government is simply making believe it was solving all the miners’ problems.
It is interesting to note that the Cabinet gave in to the strikers in opposition to the miners’ union, which is a slap in the face of UCIWI, the latter being traditionally considered pro-government (recall that at the beginning of the Pavlohrad miners’ march the Cabinet held “exclusive” talks with this union and its leader Viktor Derzhak was thought by many as the likely figure to take the Coal Industry Minister’s portfolio).
All this leads to several conclusions: (a) the miners’ movement in general and the Independent Miners’ Union in particular have discredited themselves in the public eye as forces trying to pull the threadbare budget blanket from each other; (b) the situation has once again demonstrated that there can be no half-way opposition, it is either for or against, and (c) the government was lying when it said there was no money.
Where did that Hr 69 million come from? Why did the Cabinet pay only when grabbed by the throat? Or maybe it set a precedent worth repeating?
Photo by Valery Miloserdov, The Day:
The banner of the striking miners came to rest at the Kyiv Train Station







