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14 July, 2005ICEM News Release No. 50/1999
Ukrainian miners are blocking coal supplies to power stations as anger mounts over massive wage debts.
By July, pay owed to Ukraine's miners totalled 532.5 million US dollars, the Ukrainian Miners' Independent Trade Union (MITU) says. The wage backlog is continuing to rise, and Ukraine's miners and their families have been plunged into dire poverty.
711 Ukrainian miners' wives and 240 children recently held a 50-km march in protest over the conditions in which they now live. They had to walk in pairs, well separated, in order to comply with curbs on the right to demonstrate.
Ukrainian electricity generators are one culprit in the wage scandal. They are now paying only about 5 percent of their coal bills in cash. The rest is settled either in complicated barter deals or not at all.
At the global level, MITU is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM).
"The Ukrainian government and the international community must ensure that the miners are paid in full," ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe insisted today. "The topmost principle, as always, must be that workers' wages and benefits have first call on the employer's available finances. The second principle is that Ukraine's coal suppliers must be paid immediately for the stocks that they have delivered in good faith.
"Recently, national and international pressure secured payment of the wages owed to Ukraine's nuclear workers," Thorpe recalled. "The Ukrainian miners deserve no less. Nor are they any less important to the future of a key economy in a volatile region."
By July, pay owed to Ukraine's miners totalled 532.5 million US dollars, the Ukrainian Miners' Independent Trade Union (MITU) says. The wage backlog is continuing to rise, and Ukraine's miners and their families have been plunged into dire poverty.
711 Ukrainian miners' wives and 240 children recently held a 50-km march in protest over the conditions in which they now live. They had to walk in pairs, well separated, in order to comply with curbs on the right to demonstrate.
Ukrainian electricity generators are one culprit in the wage scandal. They are now paying only about 5 percent of their coal bills in cash. The rest is settled either in complicated barter deals or not at all.
At the global level, MITU is affiliated to the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM).
"The Ukrainian government and the international community must ensure that the miners are paid in full," ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe insisted today. "The topmost principle, as always, must be that workers' wages and benefits have first call on the employer's available finances. The second principle is that Ukraine's coal suppliers must be paid immediately for the stocks that they have delivered in good faith.
"Recently, national and international pressure secured payment of the wages owed to Ukraine's nuclear workers," Thorpe recalled. "The Ukrainian miners deserve no less. Nor are they any less important to the future of a key economy in a volatile region."