Trade union leaders stage strike in Kyiv to demand unemployment compensation (02/02/97)

Trade union leaders stage strike in Kyiv to demand unemployment compensation

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Leaders of the National Confederation of Trade Unions (NCTU) staged a hunger strike in Ukraine's Parliament building the night of January 23 after Parliament Chairman Oleksander Moroz refused to meet their demands regarding the issuance of funds for workers' unemployment compensation and how they are to be disbursed.

They have accused the Parliament leader also of acting inhumanely in not giving them access to water, toilets and emergency medical service.

"This is banditry on the part of the chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine and the chairman of the Parliament," said Yuriy Pivovarov, the head of the Central Council of the NCTU, at a press conference on January 24.

The NCTU, which claims a membership of 3 million workers in the coal industries of Donetsk, Volyn and Mykolayiv regions and Ukraine's civil aviation industry, was demanding that Chairman Moroz rescind a decree that all money from the government budget for unemployed workers of the NCTU and other independent trade unions must flow through the government-controlled Federation of Trade Unions, headed by Oleksander Stoian.

Mr. Pivovarov said an order that Mr. Moroz signed on December 20 that unemployment funds can flow only through Mr. Stoian's federation, which National Bank of Ukraine Chairman Viktor Yuschenko carried out by issuing an NBU regulation to the effect on December 30, is unconstitutional in regard to Article 36, which guarantees the rights of all trade labor unions.

Mr. Yuschenko said he signed the decrees without reviewing them because he had trusted that his assistants had approved them beforehand, according to the newspaper Den.

Twenty-three leaders of the NCTU met with Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Viktor Musiaka in the afternoon of January 23, after they had been denied access to Mr. Moroz. The two sides could not agree on how the matter should be resolved, said Mr. Pivovarov, because "Mr. Musiaka's solution was a lengthy process that we could not agree to."

The group then decided they would not leave the building until they had met with Mr. Moroz, and declared a hunger strike. At 10 p.m. they were granted a meeting with the Parliament leader, which was "unproductive," said Mr. Pivovarov. "We quickly realized that he held a grudge against us. He told us, 'You make caricatures of me in your newspaper (Trybuna), you write negative things about me, now you want me to help you.'"

The group then settled on the second floor of the Parliament Building where they were seen by reporters around midnight waving and giving the power salute from behind sealed windows.

The next morning they were asked to move because the Verkhovna Rada was to begin its final session before the recess. After they had refused, Mr. Pivovarov said, a member of the Parliament militia returned to tell them that a delegation of deputies would meet with them. He said they were then led to the basement of the building, where no deputy came to see them and where they were kept without water or toilet facilities. Mr. Pivovarov also explained that during the evening one of the hunger strikers became ill and that emergency medical treatment was refused, until several deputies visited the group, including Lev Lukianenko and Stepan Khmara.

"These are the same methods that Adolph Hitler used in Germany in the 1930s," said Mr. Pivovarov. "What Adolph Hitler did in Germany, Adolph Moroz is doing today."

The group suspended its hunger strike after the Parliament session finished.

At the heart of the issue is who will control the disbursement of funds from the state budget to unemployed workers. Mr. Stoian's federation has been battling with the numerous independent unions that have sprung up over the last years over representation of Ukraine's organized labor force, which is disgruntled over inconsistent wage payments and the deterioration of working conditions, especially in the Donetsk coal mines. Many there feel Mr. Stoian has done little to help their plight, which spurred some to call an independent miners' strike in Donetsk in July 1996.

In 1995, the deputy chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, Oleh Diomin, signed a document that established a commission of trade unionists, bankers and Parliament deputies to investigate and resolve problems associated with the payment of unemployment benefits to trade union workers.

On that basis, according to Mr. Pivovarov, independent trade unions opened bank accounts in private banks. After Mr. Moroz's order of December 20, electronic mail messages were sent on January 4 to major banks in Ukraine requesting that they close the accounts of independent trade unions.

According to an NCTU press release dated January 22, Mr. Stoian and Mr. Moroz are working in tandem to bring the return of leftist political forces to power. At the fourth Convention of the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine Mr. Moroz remarked that this could be accomplished "with a [political] bloc of left and left-center parties and movements or close cooperation among them." Mr. Pivovarov said he believes Mr. Moroz is helping Mr. Stoian re-consolidate the federation leader's power over Ukraine's workers in return for his allegiance in the Parliament elections in March 1998.

Mr. Pivovarov said the federation will continue to work to strengthen the independent labor movement and see the removal of Mr. Moroz from his position as Parliament chairman. "We place our hopes on the guarantor of the Constitution - President Leonid Kuchma," said Mr. Pivovarov.

Yarema Bachynsky contributed to this story.

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