Striking due to salary delays, Ukrainian miners plan to organize protests in Kiev, which will be held at the office of the president and government agencies. This was announced by the head of the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine, Mikhail Volynets. According to him, the event is scheduled for August 25 - this day marks the professional holiday of the miners.
“The miners of the Kurakhovskaya mine continue the protest rally. They blocked the road at a pedestrian crossing in the area of the settlement Novoselidovka for two hours. The miners, together with the unions, are ready to leave for Kiev on August 25 ... to hold a picket under the walls of the office of the president and other government agencies demanding payment of wage arrears, ”he said on Facebook.
Mine "Kurakhovskaya", which is part of the state enterprise "Selidovugol", is located in the territory of Donetsk region controlled by Kiev. The total debt of Ukrainian state coal enterprises to the miners is about $ 40 million (2.6 billion rubles) - this figure was previously called in the union.
The strike at the Kurakhovskaya mine began last week. The work was completely stopped, the miners blocked the highway in protest. At a meeting held on August 5 with the general director of the Selidovugol enterprise, he said that funds for paying wage arrears would appear at best in late August, as Prime Minister Vladimir Groysman was deciding this question. And the next meeting of the Cabinet, which is now on vacation, will be held no earlier than the 14th.
- Miners' strike in Kiev
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- © Pavlo Gonchar / ZUMAPRESS.com
This is far from the first strike of miners in Ukraine in recent months. So, in July, workers at the Gorskaya mine of the Pervomaiskugol state-owned enterprise, located in the Kiev-controlled area of the Luhansk region, refused to go to the surface of the earth. They opposed management plans to disconnect the mine from power supply and flood it.
This threat arose due to the enormous debt of the Pervomaiskugol State Enterprise, which manages five mines, to the electricity supplier. Similar problems arose earlier - in April of this year, it almost came to a complete halt to the work of a number of mines, which are city-forming enterprises.
It cannot be said that in Ukraine there is no demand for coal. On the contrary, the country is actively increasing imports of this raw material from abroad - while its own mines are idle, experts say.
“Earlier, Ukraine almost completely covered its coal requirements, with the exception of coking coal, which it purchased from Russia. But against the backdrop of the blockade of Donbass, a paradoxical situation occurred when Kiev defiantly acquired coal in the USA and South Africa, ”said Mikhail Krivoguz, a leading researcher at IMEMO RAS, in an interview with RT.
“Instant profit”
State-owned coal enterprises are on the verge of closure not only in the Donbass, but also in other regions of Ukraine. In June, the Independent Miners' Union sent a letter to the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Alexander Danilyuk, in which he demanded to stop the liquidation of the state-owned enterprise Lvivugol and pay off wage arrears to employees.
Another demand was the termination of the “illegal corruption process of liquidation of the state enterprise“ Lvovugol ”, as well as the removal of state mines from the control of“ representatives of crime ”.
According to financial analyst Anna Kokoreva, corruption could be one of the important factors of decline in Ukrainian enterprises.
“During the change of power in Ukraine there was a redistribution of assets, and they could go to the owners, focusing not on long-term development, but on momentary profit. We also went through this in the 90s, ”explained the interlocutor of RT.
- Alexander Danilyuk
- RIA News
At the beginning of June 2019, the miners of six coal mines located in the Lviv region went to a protest rally and blocked the Lviv-Rava-Russkaya highway demanding to pay off wage arrears.
The head of the Ukrainian government Volodymyr Groysman reacted to these calls. He received a delegation of miners from the Lviv region, instructed to unblock the procurement of coal produced by the mines of the region, and make them a priority for state energy companies. Then he expressed the opinion that this step will help the management of the mines to pay salary debts. As a result, on June 19, the head of the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine announced the resumption of the mines after transferring the required funds to the accounts of SE Lvovugol.
Note that the Ukrainian coal mining industry has been in crisis for many years. Back in 2009, Viktor Yanukovych, being the leader of the opposition Party of Regions at that time, spoke about the collapse of this industry sector.
“I know that the coal industry went through different periods of its existence. But over the past 30–40 years, I don’t remember the more difficult situation in the coal industry, ”the politician said.
According to experts, for all the years of independence, Ukrainian coal enterprises received virtually no investment, and mines have not been modernized for decades. And those enterprises, from which it was still possible to “squeeze” profit, fell into the hands of private traders. The situation worsened after the EuroMaidan, when a new round of redistribution of assets began in the country.
Delayed death
Recently, the production of domestic coal in Ukraine has declined sharply, and Kiev had to increase its imports. The country purchased part of the raw materials from Russia, and in 2017, supplies of anthracite from the United States began. The situation was aggravated by the trade blockade imposed by the nationalists against the DPR and LPR, in the territory of which a significant proportion of the coal of the anthracite group is mined.
Despite the fact that Ukrainian politicians have repeatedly called for increased coal production in the country, state-owned enterprises have not waited for investments. Instead, it was decided to stop state support for such mines, some of them should have been closed after this, and the other should be transferred to private owners.
In October 2014, such an initiative was made by the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, who was then president. According to the terms of the decision, after 2021 all mines must be either privatized or liquidated.
- Coal cars at the station
- RIA News
- © Pavel Lisitsyn
In January 2019, a law came into force in Ukraine, extending for three years a moratorium on bankruptcy and blocking the accounts of state-owned coal enterprises. As stated in the explanatory note to the document, otherwise, soon all the work of the state mines would be blocked, which would jeopardize the existence of the public sector of the coal industry and the energy security of Ukraine as a whole.
It should be noted that today about 50 thousand people work at state coal-mining enterprises of the country. In some cases, it is coal mines that play a city-forming role and are the only place of employment for the local population.
However, the authorities still do not take any measures to save enterprises, experts say. As the head of the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Donbass, Mykola Volynko, said in April, if coal prices in the Ukrainian market do not rise, all state mines will go bankrupt.
“If the linking of Ukrainian coal to low prices on the Rotterdam exchange remains, then the state mines will go bankrupt, tens of thousands of miners will be left without work,” he said.
As Anna Kokoreva explained, linking domestic coal prices to international could adversely affect the Ukrainian coal industry.
“Everything that is traded on international exchanges is volatile assets, the price for them changes regularly and often it is lower than it can be on the domestic market. This is logical, because domestic demand for coal can be higher than the global average, ”said the expert.
Kokoreva added that another factor in the decline in world coal prices in recent years has been a drop in demand, as many countries are striving to reduce coal generation due to its poor environmental performance.
But the main reason for the decline of the Ukrainian coal industry was the authorities' reluctance to invest in the modernization of enterprises, analysts say. According to Kokoreva, most of the mines have not been updated for a long time, although coal mining is a very capital-intensive industry and needs serious investments.
“Now, when the enterprises are in a crisis situation, the owners and the state are trying to shift the solution of problems to the workers by cutting off their payments,” the expert summed up.