Ukraine miners: ‘Two months without wages!!!’

Miners at state-owned companies in both western and eastern Ukraine have held protests, blocked roadways and organized work stoppages over the last few weeks to demand payment of back wages.

Miners and other workers in Ukraine had faced continual periods when the bosses don’t pay for extended periods of time — often resolved only when they’ve gone on strike or organized public actions.

On Oct. 8 and 9 more than 40 miners occupied the underground Kapitalnaya mine in Donetsk. They had only been paid 10 percent of their August wages and little since.

The week before some 1,600 miners at the Buzhanska and Novovlinskaya mines near the Polish border refused to work for almost a week. The Ministry of Energy then agreed to pay July wages, but only to the underground workers. At protest above, miner holds sign that says, “Miners two months without wages.”

On Oct. 9 some 70 miners from the state-owned Volynvuhillia mine in the Volvyn region in western Ukraine blocked traffic at the Yahodyn checkpoint at the Polish border. They let cars pass by, but trucks were blocked into the evening. Both the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine and the Coal Mining Workers’ Union have backed the jobs actions.

There were similar work stoppages over the previous two months at mines in Lviv, Lugansk and Donetsk.

“The miners demand that the Ukrainian authorities settle salary arrears for August and September,” Mikhail Volynets, head of the Independent Trade Union of Miners, said in a statement Oct. 18. “If the authorities don’t solve this problem, in November new protest actions might take place.”

— SETH GALINSKY