An appeal: Support fired Ukrainian trade union organizers

Workers World received the following appeal through the Workers Action newspaper (proletar.org.ua), calling for support from the Coordination Council of the Workers’ Movement (KSRD) of Ukraine, a formerly socialist country of 46 million people now ruled by a pro-U.S. capitalist regime.

In Ukraine, the consequences of the world economic crisis are already seriously impacting workers in many sectors of the economy. In metallurgy there has been a huge slump in production. Enterprises have been closed, wages slashed and masses of workers have been fired or laid off.

Unfortunately, resistance to these acts of the capitalists has been largely prevented because the workers’ movement of our country has experienced the strongest recession for the past eight years.

The overwhelming majority of trade unions, even those once known for their fighting spirit, are now degraded. Their structures have turned into appendages of the administrators of the factories, and they now completely support the owners’ decisions on salary reductions and deteriorating working conditions.

Many independent workers’ organizations have broken up, been destroyed or have fewer members. The real workers’ movement has several weakened organizations that have survived despite many complexities and pressures. The capitalists and their state especially hate these organizations.

Now, in the current conditions of economic crisis, small and very modest actions are leading to a revival of the workers’ movement. Workers in various enterprises have started to listen to the opinion of existing activists and workers’ organizations.

The capitalists, afraid of a growing independent workers` movement, have taken measures to stop workers from fighting back.

Recently, reprisals against workers have taken place in several cities. In the city of Mariupol—the large metallurgical center in Donetsk area—owners of a metallurgical combine have dismissed the heads of small independent trade unions that have called on workers to protest against wage cuts.

Workers have been intimidated, detained and kept out of the factories, not only by private security guards armed with machine guns but also by militia (police). In Kiev, a group of security guards at an airplane factory tried to prevent the distribution of our newspaper, Workers’ Action, threatening our comrades with pistols. Armed militia have tried to arrest our members. This is not the first such case at the Kiev factories.

The largest of the still-fighting organizations in the workers’ movement of Ukraine is the Independent Trade Union of Miners (NPG) from the Imeni Barakova mine in the Lugansk area. These workers have been under fierce attack by the bosses. But they have engaged in strikes, marches and protest camps. Some 100-150 copies of our newspaper are distributed to members of this trade union on a regular basis.

The NPG helps create fighting trade unions in other cities and settlements of the Lugansk area. The union hates the administration and owners of not only the mines, but every capitalist enterprise. The private owner of the mine, billionaire Rinat Ahmetov, wants to break this trade union in order to intimidate all mine workers in an attempt to show that the workers’ organization is incapable of protecting itself.

In violation of the law, NPG vice-chairman Michail Mikerin and union committee members Lyudmila Kotvitskaja, Vladimir Panchenko and Grigory Tkach have been fired from work. Local courts and the Supreme Court, carrying out the will of the mine owners, have refused to restore many trade-union activists to their jobs.

The Coordination Council of Workers’ Movement (KSRD) of Ukraine supports the struggle of all workers to their jobs and wages.

Please send letters in support of NPG members at the Imeni Barakova mine to the following: Supreme Court of Ukraine, 01024 Ukraine, street P. Orlika, 4, Kiev; the State Office of Public Prosecutor of Ukraine, 01001 Ukraine, street Riznytska, 13/15, Kiev; Lugansk Regional State Administration, 91016 Ukraine, Lugansk, Ploshchad Heroev VOV, 3 (e-mail: [email protected]). Send copies to the KSRD at [email protected].