Soviet Coal Miners Vote to Cut Government Ties : Labor: The Communist Party is no longer the champion of worker’s rights, they contend. They decide to form their own, independent union.

Coal miners voted Friday to form a union independent of Soviet government control, but they disagreed on what form the new organization should take.

“We are workers, but we do not consider the Communist Party of the Soviet Union our party,” said the resolution. “We call for a mass exit from the party.”

The resolution demanded that the party relinquish its control over large state enterprises and give up holdings, including property and bank accounts filled with members’ dues.

The resolution, approved by a vote of 308 to 116, said Communists could no longer present themselves as champions of workers’ rights.

“The Communist Party is losing its authority,” said a resolution passed by the first congress of Soviet miners meeting in the Don Basin coal mining region of the eastern Ukraine.

The resolution created a committee to set up the framework of a miners’ union free of government or Communist Party control. That framework will be considered at a second miners’ congress in Moscow on Aug. 15-16.

Later in the day, the miners debated whether to try to take over the existing union or base a new organization on workers’ committees formed during the nationwide coal strike that crippled heavy industry last summer.

“We don’t know whether a free union is really needed,” said Yuri Balderov, a member of the Donetsk workers’ committee that organized the First Miners’ Congress. He was interviewed at the congress, which began Monday in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.

Some miners have said they feared that breaking ties with the old union, which is under the mining ministry’s control, would deny them access to vacation resorts, pensions and other benefits to which they have already made financial contributions.

It appeared the miners would not vote to stage another strike, although many delegates to the congress accused the government of failing to fulfill the promises it made to end last July’s walkout.

The push for an independent union opens another rift between Soviet citizens and their government. President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has encouraged decentralization, but formation of an independent miners’ union would mean the government would have less control over workers, who are seen as the backbone of the Communist system.

Being outside the government structure would also make it easier for the workers to organize strikes, another threat to the faltering economy.

Miners also gave a warm welcome to two American trade union representatives, Richard Wilson of the AFL-CIO, and John J. Banovic of the United Mine Workers of America.

Both Americans promised that their unions would assist the new independent Soviet miners’ union.

“A free society requires independent trade unions, requires the right of association free of government and party control,” declared Wilson, who said he was the first AFL-CIO representative to be allowed into the Soviet Union.

On Thursday, the 712 delegates representing every coal mine in the country passed a resolution calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov and drove the Soviet mining minister from their meeting with angry shouts and demands.