By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — On August 23 leaders of Russia's main coal miners' union, the 780,000-member Russian Union of Coal Industry Workers (Rosugleprof), agreed to suspend a nationwide strike due to begin three days later. Then, shortly before the end of the month, the union called on coal industry workers to set up an all-Russian strike committee.
This contrast typifies the ambiguous situation that has emerged from the industrial battles of coal workers during the past few months. With the government conceding only a fraction of the union's demands, the Rosugleprof leaders nevertheless have held off from launching a general struggle. But at the same time, the union chiefs have no real confidence that the government will keep its promises to miners, and are casting about for a means of reapplying pressure on the authorities.
With miners' militancy unquelled, and their main demands unsatisfied, the likelihood is now high that big coal strikes will erupt in Russia during the autumn.
When and if they occur, these strikes will take up unresolved issues from widespread spontaneous stoppages during July and August. In these earlier actions, 11,000 coal workers downed tools for nearly a month in the Far East, and a further 30,000 walked off the job in Rostov province in southern Russia. Most of these strikers returned to work after August 6, when the Rosugleprof leaders presented the government with a set of demands, promising that a full-scale national stoppage would be unleashed late in the month if these claims were not met.
The union's key demands were for the government to use federal budget funds in order to pay the money — about 2 trillion roubles ($US390 million) — which the miners were owed in back wages; to take "concrete measures" to ensure that coal customers would pay their bills in future; and to form a financial oversight commission, including union representatives, for the coal industry.
Negotiations continued after the return to work, and culminated on August 23 in top-level talks in which the government side was headed by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. Here the union agreed to suspend its strike call, while the government undertook to pay the miners, by the end of August, all the money which it owed them for wages.
This agreement involved a massive concession by Rosugleprof. The federal budget debt to the miners at that point amounted to only about 10% of the total wage arrears in the coal industry. The great bulk of the wage debt stems from the failure of other coal industry customers, above all the electricity generating firm United Energy Systems, to pay for coal supplies. The 200 billion roubles due to be handed over by the government to the miners covers only a few weeks' worth of the overall arrears, which are close to the coal industry's wage bill for three months.
Meanwhile, the government is not an innocent bystander where the non-payment of debts by privatised coal consumers is concerned. In various cases, the state retains shareholdings in the firms involved. In general, the chain of non-payments that culminates in the inability of coal enterprises to meet their wage bills reflects the government's stringent austerity policies, which include long delays in paying for goods and services provided to state bodies.
Why did the leaders of Rosugleprof, Russia's best organised large union and historically one of its most militant, fail to pursue a tougher line? According to press reports, the union chiefs felt it appropriate to give the newly revamped government ministry a chance to fulfil its obligations — a line of reasoning unlikely to impress half-starved miners. Tactical considerations, such as the desirability of postponing a strike campaign until later in the autumn, when the need for coal will be more acute, may have played a part.
But the possibility remains that the union leaders simply lost their nerve in the face of a struggle that would be unlikely to remain within the bounds of cautious threat and partial concession that have characterised the disputes in the coal industry during the past few years.
If this is the case, it represents a contradiction. In recent weeks the Rosugleprof leadership has given signs of understanding that the crisis in Russia's coal industry has reached unprecedented seriousness. Late in August, union spokespeople were protesting bitterly at the steep rise this year in debts to coal producers; between January and August, these debts were said to have increased by 53%. The United Energy Systems debt was up by 70%.
The union leaders have also been angered by the government's growing clampdown on subsidies to the coal industry. Early in August Rosugleprof chairperson Vitaly Budko warned that the authorities were planning to cut these payments in half.
Presumably, the Rosugleprof leaders understand that faint-hearted protests are no longer adequate; that coal workers' patience is bound to crack soon; and that if the union fails to plan and lead a coordinated campaign of action, broad spontaneous strikes will occur in any case.
The call for miners to begin organising themselves for strike action suggests that the union chiefs recognise that further big clashes are almost inevitable. But union members would be better served if their leaders followed a less tortuous course, and did not give the government credit in advance for a good will it is most unlikely to display.