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13 May, 2015On 28 April 2015, the Sixth Congress of the Metallurgical and Mining Industry Workers Union of Ukraine, an affiliate of IndustriALL, took place in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. The participants demanded to establish real peace in Ukraine.
395 members of the regional and local unions of the Metallurgical and Mining Industry Workers Union of Ukraine from the Vinnitsa, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Zhitomir, Zaporozhye, Kiev, Kirovograd, Lugansk, Lviv, Nikolaev, Odessa, Poltava, Kharkov and Cherkassy regions participated.
The Congress reviewed the performance of the union's Central Committee from May 2010 till April 2015, adopted a Plan of Actions for the next five years and released an Open Letter "We demand to establish real peace"; the latter text is published below. Earlier, this text was also published by the Mining & Metallurgical Workers' Union of Russia, an affiliate of IndustriALL, on its web-page.
OPEN LETTER
of the 6th Congress of the Metallurgical and Mining Industry
Workers Union of Ukraine
We demand to establish real peace
The Sixth Congress of the Metallurgical and Mining Industry Workers Union of Ukraine draws the attention of the Ukrainian authorities and the entire global community to the quite literally catastrophic situation in the social, humanitarian and production spheres which was created as a result of the military and political conflict in the east of the country.
The great grief and the pain of loss have already come to thousands of Ukrainian homes. Dozens of thousands of families lost their dwellings which were damaged, burnt by explosions and fires. The war destroys enterprises and workplaces, hospitals and schools.
The metallurgical industry of Ukraine also experienced heavy loss due to the military operations in 2014 and at the beginning of this year.
As of 01 April 2015, 20 out of 30 functional blast furnaces (67 percent), 6 out of 9 open-hearth furnaces (78 percent) and 14 out of 21 converters (67 percent) were operating. The largest enterprises in the east of the country did not operate for a long time: Donetsksteel, Enakievo Metallurgical Plant, Alchevsk Metallurgical Plant, Donetsk Electrometallurgical Plant, Donetsk Metalworks, Alchevsk Coking Plant, Donetsk Coke Plant and Yasinovskiy Coking Plant.
In 2014 the losses of metallurgical enterprises reached 23.7 billion Ukrainian Hryvnia, and export of steel products decreased by 7.6 percent. In January and February this year export decreased by 32 percent, and currency revenue from it decreased by 40.2 percent in comparison to the same period of 2014.
There is a threatening situation in the sphere of employment. In 2014 the industry lost about 25 thousand workplaces. Dozens of thousands of steelworkers and miners were forced to idle or work reduced working hours. The real wages sharply decreased.
We know well that there is no bigger tragedy, bigger injustice, than a war. It is necessary to stop it!
We stand for a comprehensive ceasefire in eastern Ukraine in order not to spill more blood, for a genuine disengagement of military forces to the safe distance, for an unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid to the affected regions, for a withdrawal of all illegal armed groups, for ensuring the control over frontier and for a restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
Unfortunately, the Minsk Agreements did not bring a stable peace. It means the politicians did not do everything they could to achieve it.
We call the presidents of Ukraine and Russia, leaders of the USA and the European countries to do everything possible to develop and implement the plan of peaceful settlement of the military conflict and to stop death and destruction.
Working man does not need war!
We demand to establish peace!