On the seventh day of the strike, part of the protesting Georgian Manganese employees went on a hunger strike. At the moment, ten miners are starving themselves in a tent set up in front of Chiatura City Hall.
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“For the seventh day, we’ve been holding rallies, asking for a bare minimum, but no results so far. I’ve been warning them [the employer], that if they don’t meet our minimum conditions, and do what they are obliged to do, the demands would change. Today, one of our unconditional demands is a 40% salary increase. We will stay here until they come to their senses and start making some concessions,” stated one of the strikers, Merab Saralidze.
Hundreds of miners went on a strike when upon returning to the mine after a three-month forced leave, the company went back on the promised pay raises and instead, changed their work schedule for the worst. According to the workers, the new work plan requires them to do 30-40% more work without a corresponding salary increase.
“When they temporarily laid us off with a 60% salary on February 1, they promised us that when normal work conditions restore, they would give us a 12% raise, but when we returned to work, they told us they would only manage 5%, no more. Besides,
They offered us a new work plan, which is completely unacceptable for any of us, as it means that we should produce 40% more output for the company compared to previous years, without a salary increase. We will not increase your salary but give you more workload - this doesn’t make sense. We object to this and the decision has been made. We will only back down if the company makes a compromise,” says Saralidze.
The miner's demands are 40% salary increase; return to pre-February 1, 2023 work plan/schedule; suspension of interest accrual on bank loans and postponement of payments; remittance of what has been accrued so far; improving health insurance; the possibility of paid leave; improving, updating, and changing work equipment; improving food; allowing workers to use the sanatorium, as before February 1, 100% reimbursement of medical leave, 100% compensation for days missed from June 7 until the restoration of a normal work process, bringing safety standards to the highest level, cancellation of subsidiary LLCs and merging back into one company, consulting the locals when exploiting new land via open quarries.
Georgian Manganese explains the necessity for the renewed terms of employment with a drop in demand for ferroalloys on the global market and a crisis caused by reduced prices. Giorgi Tatishvili, the Financial director of the company, stated in an interview with bm.ge that Georgian Manganese is expecting a loss of 28-30 million USD in annual income and is looking to halve this loss.
“Georgian Manganese had no export from February to May. Low-volume sales were made from warehouse leftovers we had built up during the previous cycle. During this period, despite the fact that production was halted, employees were receiving 60% salary, retained health-insurance benefits, the deduction of salary advances was suspended, and we negotiated quite fruitfully with banks to postpone their loan payments. These proposed work-schedule changes that will affect 720 employees serve our efforts to mitigate that 28-30 deficit and half the losses. Part of this effort is a transition to three-shift schedules,’’ stated Giorgi Tatishvili.
He also said that Georgian Manganese’s new management deems these changes to be in line with company principles.
Georgian Manganese, which is the largest miner in Georgia, and has a yearly turnover of hundreds of millions and an annual profit of 96 million, has been managed by a special manager appointed by the state in 2017. In May 2023, by court order, Besik Kirtadze was appointed as the new special manager of the company.
