Russian miners die as government delays payments
By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Another horrific coal mine disaster has shocked the Russian public and angered coal industry workers.
Early on January 18, an explosion and fire in the Tsentralnaya mine in Vorkuta, in the Arctic north of European Russia, claimed 27 lives. This followed a catastrophe on December 2, which killed 67 miners in a pit in the Kuzbass coal region in western Siberia.
Along with expressions of outrage from government leaders — Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin vowed that any mine official who neglected safety would be prosecuted — came attempts to prove that the state was not to blame. All the funds allocated for the coal industry in the 1997 budget had been disbursed, finance ministry officials stressed.
Miners' leaders tell a different story. Government assistance to the Russian coal industry, which is still overwhelmingly state owned, is only about one third of what the miners' unions consider essential if the industry is to be maintained and developed.
Lack of investment, coal unionists point out, is directly affecting safety. Safety equipment is often not purchased or not repaired. At the Tsentralnaya mine, Russian television reported, the miners did not have methane gas detectors, which could have warned of the danger of an explosion.
In all, nearly 500 miners have died on the job in Russia in the past two years. Each 100,000 tonnes of coal mined now cost almost three lives — a fatality rate triple that in the late Soviet period, and about 10 times that in western Europe.
Even before the latest disaster, the government's cost-cutting was a prime factor inspiring a wave of protests in coal regions.
On January 15, an estimated 200,000 workers in the Kuzbass, Russia's main coal-producing area, held a one-day protest action. The central demand was for the payment of back wages, now owed for an average of five months. In addition, the protesters called on the government to draft and fund a plan for the revival of the Kuzbass, and for a halt to mine closures.
Responding to World Bank demands for the "restructuring" of the coal sector, the government plans to close 87 of the country's 200 or so mines over the next two years.
Coal industry workers are also renewing their struggles in the maritime district of the far east. On January 15, the newspaper Trud reported that maritime district miners planned to halt coal shipments to non-paying customers, above all the energy firm Dalenergo. Some miners in the region are still owed wages from last May.
A committee set up to coordinate mass actions by the far east miners called a regional protest for January 27. Planned actions included blocking the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Teachers take action
The climate of struggle created by the miners has encouraged protests by other workers — most notably teachers — who have also suffered from the government's austerity strategies.
Ironically, these new struggles have come as the government has been congratulating itself on progress in wiping out federal wage debts to "budget sector" workers (state employees in the area of education, health and culture).
President Boris Yeltsin promised last year to eliminate these arrears by January 1, and vice-premier Boris Nemtsov declared in mid-January that the federal authorities had "over-fulfilled" their wage obligations.
That is not to say that all the "budget sector" workers have actually seen their money. Citing data from the state statistics committee, Trud reported on January 21 that in not one of Russia's 89 administrative regions had Yeltsin's pledge been met.
The federal authorities had merely forwarded money to regional governments, which were supposed to add their own share and hand it all over to the workers. But the regional authorities often failed to make the payments: not surprising, since the federal debt to the regions late last year stood at around 50 billion roubles (US$8.4 billion).
When many of the promised salary payments did not materialise, teachers staged coordinated protest actions in 78 regions on January 20.
Even if their pay did arrive, teachers still had cause to demonstrate. According to union officials, teachers' salaries have not been indexed since 1995. At about 500 roubles (US$85) per month, the average pay of education and science workers is only marginally above the poverty line.
Many teachers' meetings on January 20 passed resolutions demanding that salaries be raised to the level of the average industrial wage.
Even if all of Russia's teachers and health workers eventually receive their back pay, that will not necessarily mean that the broader wage picture has improved significantly. According to Trud, non-budget wage debts declined only minimally during December, to a still-astronomical figure of 44.1 billion roubles (US$7.4 billion).
Widening protest
To meet its highly publicised target of paying the budget sector workers, the government, in effect, took wages from workers in privatised industry. Total state indebtedness rose steeply in the final months of 1997, partly because the government was failing to pay the firms supplying it with goods and services. Many of these firms were then unable to pay their workers.
Some of the government's most notorious unpaid debts are to the electricity generating industry, which in turn is often unable to pay the coal mines.
Encouraged by the militancy of the miners and teachers, the mass trade union body, the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR), decided in mid-January to call an all-Russia protest action for February 3.
Unlike a similar Russia-wide protest last March, which focused on the government's wage debt to budget sector employees, this action aimed at legislative changes to force wage payments from private firms.
Late in December the Russian Constitutional Court ruled against amendments to the civil code that would have compelled enterprises to pay wages before meeting their tax bills. The court's ruling handed responsibility back to enterprise directors to decide which debts should be settled first.
Unpaid tax bills, however, incur heavy fines, while Russian employers routinely delay wage payments with impunity. In effect, the court ruled in favour of another escalation of wage arrears.
FNPR leaders are also reported to be alarmed at lobbying by senior government ministers for a new labour code. The draft of the new labour legislation includes provisions which make it much easier for employers to sack workers whenever business conditions turned bad.