On the 11th day of the miners’ strike in Chiatura, one of the protesters of the rally, Malkhaz Saralidze, sewed his mouth shut as a sign of protest. The strikers are holding protest marches in the city every day, and ten miners are on hunger strike for the fifth day. The main demands of Georgian Manganese workers are to increase their salaries by 40% and leave the work schedule unchanged, which the company is not agreeing to.
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“The mediator got involved in the negotiations, and two meetings were held, but the main demands are not fulfilled. One miner sewed his mouth, and many others are planning to. We are stopping them for now, but the discontent is growing and I don't know how long we will be able to hold them back. The state should get more involved in this process.
If we can’t reach our voices from Chiatura, part of us will go to Tbilisi and voice our demands outside the parliament,” said a miner on a hunger strike, Malkhaz Saralidze.
Public Defender Levan Ioseliani met the striking miners yesterday. “We are doing everything in our power to help the parties reach agreement. The protesters are being reasonable and are ready to make certain concessions, however, at the same time, they call on the other side to consider their demands,” said Ioseliani after the meeting.
According to the statement released by Georgian Manganese yesterday, the company has reached an agreement on all points with the miners, except for the salary increase and the return to the old work schedule.
The company offered the employees to stop protesting, resume work, and to determine their bonuses and benefits based on the economic efficiency that will be achieved as a result of the work.
Before the strike, the company representatives told the miners that the company has not exported the goods this year because the demand on the international market has plummeted and the prices are low.
Georgian Manganese has stopped its manganese ore mines since February 1 this year without publicly explaining the reason. The company kept paying 60% of the wages to more than 3500 miners. Four months later, in June, when the mines were supposed to continue work, the company imposed changed work conditions on the employees. As of now, miners have 14 demands:
As of now, miners have 14 demands:
- 40% salary increase (does not apply to management);
- Return to pre-February 1, 2023 work schedule/plan;
- suspension of interest accrual on bank loans and postponement of payments; remittance of what has been accrued so far;
- Improved health insurance and its conditions;
- Possibility of paid leave;
- Allow employees to start work as soon as possible;
- Improving, updating, and upgrading equipment;
- Improving servings (for example, replacing canned food with something else)
- 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, taking their interests into account, as required by the international norms of human rights and the Constitution of Georgia. Open pit mining of manganese should be conducted in full compliance with the law, as it is the constitutional right of a person to live in a healthy environment. Air pollution should be controlled, Geological and ecological risk factors should be taken into account, and if everything is within the norm, the humus layer should be removed and stored, biological reclamation and the planting of trees and plants, which are authentic to the local culture, should be carried out.
Georgian Manganese has been mining manganese in Chiatura since 2007, and by license terms, will continue to mine the ore until 2047. The license has been issued for 16 430 hectares of land in Chiatura and Sachkhere. The owner of the enterprise is Georgian American Alloys, which is registered in the Duchy of Luxembourg (offshore) and owned by Ukrainian billionaire Igor Kalomoisky. The owner of about 4% of the company is a businessman close to Georgian Dream, Giorgi Kapanadze, nicknamed "Rizha". Currently, Kamapadze is the chairman of the company's supervisory board.
In 2013-2017, the company was fined 416 million GEL for environmental damage. In 2017, under the pretext of avoiding an ecological disaster, the government restricted the ownership rights of the Kalomoisky company through the court and introduced a special manager to the company. "Georgian Manganese" is still under state management.
