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Wages win for Ukrainian railway workers
26 March 2009
Workers in the Ukrainian rail sector have won an agreement from government not to slash the industry’s wages budget.
The ITF-affiliated Trade Union of Railway and Transport Construction Workers - representing 98 per cent of railway employees in the Ukraine, almost half a million workers - won the agreement on 17 March. This followed a pledge by members to take strike action if the government took the decision to apply a controversial proposal to the rail sector. The plan would have halved the wages budget of all state enterprise monopolies, including the railways, from 3 March.
In protest, Vadim Tkachov, president of the Trade Union of Railway and Transport Construction Workers sent a telegram to Ukranian president Victor Yushchenko, head of the Ukrainian Parliament Volodymyr Lytvyn and prime minister Yulia Timoshenko expressing indignation over the resolution. Workers attending a conference on 12 March, hosted by the union, also registered their protest and promised to take strike action should their demands go unheeded.
“I strongly object to the plans. First and foremost average people – railway and postal workers – would have become victims of so-called ‘optimisation’,” stressed Tkachov. He added: “We are pleased to see the trade union’s demands fulfilled.”
The government has stated that it would retain benefits as outlined in collective bargaining and industry-wide agreements.
The union’s unanimously endorsed strike action proposal is unprecedented; had the strike gone ahead, it would have been the first in the union’s history.
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