Thousands of Soviet Coal Miners Stage Strikes, Defying New Law

Thousands of Soviet coal miners in the Arctic region of Vorkuta walked off the job Wednesday, defying recent legislation that bars strikes in vital industries.

About 5,000 miners at three mines have already stopped work, and 15,000 others in the region of northern Russia are expected to stop work as well, said Valentin Koposov, chairman of the Vorkuta area strike committee.

Three months after a historic nationwide miners’ strike, tens of thousands of Soviet workers around the country are angry with Moscow, saying the government has not fulfilled the key demands of the labor settlement.

“We really don’t want to strike, but it seems that is the only way we can get the Kremlin’s attention,” Koposov said by telephone from Vorkuta. “Months have gone by and we have seen practically no improvements in our conditions. Almost none of what we were promised has come through.”

The miners in Vorkuta are among the more radical in the country, and their complaints are political as well as economic. In addition to demanding higher wages and pensions, they seek revision of the constitution so that the Communist Party is no longer assured of the “leading role” in public life. They also ask that the president--now Mikhail S. Gorbachev--be elected by direct vote and not by the Supreme Soviet (Parliament).

On Monday, 20,000 miners in the Siberian Kuznetsk Basin staged a two-hour strike to protest what they said is Moscow’s unwillingness to adhere to the new labor agreement.

The strike violated a law passed this month by the Soviet Parliament setting arbitration procedures for would-be strikers and banning walkouts in such vital areas as energy, defense and transportation.

In Karaganda, a key mining city in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan, thousands of miners are angry because they say that the government has not increased pensions or vacation time as promised.

“The relations between the strike committees and the Communist Party organizations here are miserable,” said Serik Matayev, a deputy editor of the region’s leading newspaper. “Everyone comes with their complaints to the strike committees, because the party simply does not listen to them. The problem is that strike committees may be sincere, but they have no power.”

Matayev said the Kazakh miners are looking for “alternative methods of pressure,” because strikes would “put too much pressure on an already weak economy.”