THE DEPTH of the Ukraine's nuclear energy crisis,
featured in September's Global Warning column (Chernobyl:
Another Disaster Looms), was brought home vividly
by a strike which took place last year in the Khmelnitskaya
atomic energy station. No media covered the strike
except Workers' Resistance, produced by the Ukrainian
section of the Committee for a Workers' International.
We reprint an edited translation of that article
below.
THE STRIKE over unpaid wages took place in March 1998
and lasted for two days. The workers used novel tactics,
forming an underground strike committee to select
100 of the most active strikers to blockade the authorities
at Netishin (a town of 20,000 people where the power
station is located) in their own flats. These included
ten SBU secret policemen, police chiefs, power station
management, and even the station's firemen. They
cut the telephones to the flats.
A telegram was sent to Kiev: 'Power in Netishin has
been taken over by the power station's workers. We
demand our wages or we will stop electricity supplies
from the station'.
There was panic in Kiev. They tried to phone the local
SBU but got no answer. What should they do, send in
the riot police? But that would lead to clashes. They
decided to settle everything quickly, so no-one
else would follow the power workers' example. They
sent ten highly-placed bureaucrats and a lorry load
of cash and the strikers were paid the four months'
money owed to them.