Soviets Offer Pay Boost; Miners Reject It : Coal strike: Moscow agrees to double wages. The workers want more concessions.

The Soviet government offered Wednesday to double coal miners’ salaries over the next year in a desperate attempt to bring an end to a month-old strike that has cost the country’s decrepit economy millions of tons of coal, the official news agency Tass reported.

But angry miners said the government’s proposal, outlined by a conciliation commission, does not begin to meet their demands and declared that the government will have to offer far greater concessions to bring them back to work.

“We will continue to strike,” said Stepan V. Kryzhko, a member of the strike committee in Donetsk, the heart of the Ukrainian coal fields. “Nothing has been decided by the government’s offer.”

The miners have repeatedly stated that they will not be content if only their economic demands are met and their political demands are ignored. But the government refused from the beginning to discuss the miners’ political demands, which include the resignations of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and of the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies, the national Parliament.

Kryzhko said he does not expect any of the more than 165 striking mines to go back to work as a result of the government’s offer. Leaders of the strike said Tuesday that as many as 400,000 of the nation’s 1.2 million miners are striking in most of the major coal areas across the country.

The protest reflects the growing discontent among workers whose pay envelopes mean less and less as food and other consumer goods disappear from the stores, prices skyrocket and the instability of the Soviet economy grows.

“The strike is just starting,” Kryzhko said. “Prices are going up, life is getting much harder and dissatisfaction is growing. I expect more mines will join us.”

In Moscow, representatives of the striking miners met late into the night to map out a strategy for negotiations and continuation of the protest.

“We are not satisfied,” Pyotr A. Protchenko, said a spokesman for the Independent Miners Union. “We did not agree with the government.”

Gorbachev, who had refused to meet with the miners since their work stoppage began March 1, addressed the gathering of 500 miners, steel workers and enterprise managers at the end of their discussions with government officials in the Kremlin.

He described the talks as “tense and difficult” but “useful,” Tass reported.

“The main thing now is not to get embroiled in fights. Let us look after practical matters, otherwise we will be in a truly dire state,” Gorbachev told the miners. “We are all in the same boat; let’s row in the same direction.”

Under the government’s proposal, which was the first concession Soviet officials have offered, wages would be increased 25% each quarter until they are double their present levels next year in exchange for increased productivity, Tass reported.

The offer also would provide for pensions for most coal workers after 25 years on the job, increased supplies of building materials for miners’ homes and cultural centers and free trips for miners to any destination in the country once every three years.

It also would permit coal mines to sell up to 7% of their fuel coal and 5% of their coking coal on the open market, either in the Soviet Union or abroad, rather than to the state at low, fixed prices.

Prime Minister Valentin S. Pavlov, who chaired the meetings with miners, said the government does not intend to prosecute striking miners or impose sanctions despite repeated calls for punishment of the strikers.

“However, the striking miners and other interested sides will have to settle problems relating to the damage done by stoppages to manufacturers and suppliers,” Pavlov told the miners, according to Tass.