On the morning of Monday, May 14, the workers of Ukrzaliznytsia, namely the Kremenchug locomotive depot, were the first to riot. Back in April, they drew attention to numerous violations of working conditions — over 80 of them were detected by the State Labor Inspectorate last year.
“Our demands are quite real and clear: raising wages to the European level. Stopping the senseless restructuring of Ukrzaliznytsia. Driving rolling stock in accordance with the rules of technical operation and labor protection instructions. We also insist that railway workers be given back the right to retire after years of service. And finally, in principle, we demand that the members of the board of PJSC Ukrzaliznytsia be dismissed and that criminal cases be instituted against them.” — said Serhiy Moskalets, head of the trade union committee of the Free Trade Union of Railway Workers (VPZU) in the Kremenchug depot.
Strikes at transport enterprises are prohibited in Ukraine. So the railroad workers resorted to the so-called “Italian” strike, a specific type of protest in which workers agree to work only if they strictly adhere to all official regulations regarding safety or working hours. They called their actions the action “Work according to instructions”, refusing, in particular, to remove defective locomotives from the depot.
VPZU is not the largest trade union of Ukrainian railway workers, it unites about 1.3 thousand workers. However, the “Italian” strike was supported by its branches in Zaporizhzhia, Poltava, Ternopil and in the Darnytskyi depot in Kyiv.
The trade union reports on the administration’s pressure on the protesters: employees of the Zaporozhye locomotive depot are threatened with dismissal by the management of the Southern Railway. In Kryvyi Rih, paramilitary guards do not allow railwaymen to enter the enterprise.
The largest Trade Union of Railway Workers and Transport Builders of Ukraine (more than 280,000 members) did not support the protest, stating that it opposes destructive attempts to block the transportation process.
On Wednesday, May 16, employees of the ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih railway workshop joined the “Italian” strike of colleagues. They refused to work on faulty locomotives.
“ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih” is one of the most powerful metallurgical plants on the planet. Every day, it produces more than 45 thousand tons of steel, cast iron and rolled metal, extracting about 60 thousand tons of ore in its own mines. Last year, the company sold products worth more than 66 billion hryvnias, the net profit amounted to more than 5 billion hryvnias
As Yury Samoilov, head of the Kryvyi Rih branch of the Independent Trade Union of Mineworkers of Ukraine, told Hromadskyi, the working conditions of the company’s railway workers are sometimes even worse than at Ukrzaliznytsia.
“Rail transport serves all production at the plant. Trains deliver raw materials and take out finished products. Therefore, together with the railway workers, the Marteniv and converter workshops stopped. As far as I know, only coke batteries are working now, which are quite difficult to stop,” he explained.
According to Samoilov, the strike at “Kryvorizhstal” began as an action of solidarity with the railway workers, however, now the metallurgists are reminding the administration of their own demands.
Strike of employees of the railway workshop of the ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih enterprise. Workers are demanding compliance with safety, repair of equipment and doubling of salaries, Kryvyi Rih, Dnipropetrovsk region, May 16, 2018. Photo: Первый городской
A thousand euros instead of a thousand words
The conflict between ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih trade unions and the administration has been going on for more than a year. One of the main demands is to increase the salary of metallurgists to 1,000 euros, which they claim was before the devaluation of the hryvnia in 2014.
The plant’s management notes that the average wage at the plant is already one of the highest among metallurgical enterprises. In 2017, this indicator was 10,278 hryvnias, while the average salary in the industry was 8,423 hryvnias.
Kryvorizhstal is the most expensive object of Ukrainian privatization in history. In 2005, at a repeated tender, 93% of the plant’s shares were purchased by the international metallurgical corporation Mittal Steel of Indian businessman Lakshmi Mittal for 24.2 billion hryvnias
However, among the workers’ demands are also the improvement of working conditions at the enterprise and the strengthening of safety measures.
After a series of protest actions on May 4, the plant’s administration signed an agreement with the “Kryvorizhstal” trade union organizations on the creation of an official reconciliation commission. Therefore, the management of the company considers the current “Italian” strike of the railway workshop to be a violation of the agreement.
“Such a strike is illegal. At the moment, only 14 diesel locomotives from the 1992s are used at the enterprise. In this regard, the entire technological chain is paralyzed,” the press service reported.
The management of the enterprise explains: it is impossible to fulfill the demands of the protesters due to the reduction of production volumes caused by the failure of part of the production equipment, in particular one blast furnace.
“Now is the worst time imaginable for protests. It is no longer a question of the amount of wages, but of the availability of money in general. If the protests drag on, then we will come to the point where there will be no money for salaries – not for the current one, not for the increased one, not for any”, — explained the position of the plant’s management, financial director Serhiy Plychko.
On the evening of April 18, Ukrzaliznytsia announced that it would provide ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih with 11 locomotives with locomotive crews, and if necessary, increase their number.
