00:03 Chair: We're ready. Okay, good evening everyone, thank you very much for coming to this event organised by the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign. The Ukraine Solidarity Campaign was organised last year, a coalition of trade unionists and socialists in Great Britain, to organise links and solidarity with the trade union movement and the independent socialists in Ukraine in the current crisis. We've been engaged in a number of activities, and one of our first campaigns and links was with
00:34 the miners included, where we organised the campaign of solidarity with them in a dispute against the transnational corporation EVRAZ, which we proved to be victorious in, that campaign with the miners. But I'm very pleased tonight to have a speaker from Kryvyi Rih, one of the leaders of the Independent Mine Workers' Trade Union of Ukraine. Yuriy Samoylov is going to speak tonight on many of the aspects of the current situation. As some of you may have seen,
01:06 if you have followed our information site, there is a deep crisis taking place, not only due to the war in Ukraine but the attacks that have been made on the mining industry, which has set the scene for a number of protests and actions by miners across Ukraine against these austerity policies which are going to bring about major cuts. On top of that we've also seen the banning of the independent miners' trade
01:36 union in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic only two weeks ago. So it's a very important issue at present. Before I begin I would like to relay an apology and a message from the Fire Brigades Union in Britain, from Matt Wrack, who was unable to attend tonight but wished it to be stated clear, his message of solidarity, and that they will be continuing their cooperation with us in future. So without further ado — our translator for tonight is Tanya,
02:08 who is a member of the USC here. Very grateful. *[Samoylov is introduced as secretary of the coal miners in Kryvyi Rih]*
02:45 Interpreter: I began my involvement with independent trade unions — unofficial trade unions — at the end of the 80s, at Soviet Union times, the first protests which were staged by trade unions.
03:16 I am almost 60 years old, and out of this almost 60 years, 36 I had been working in various mines, iron ore mines.
04:08 *[on the region's iron ore deposits — the largest mining operation in Ukraine; words not recoverable]*
04:48 The foreign currency which flows into Ukraine — the GDP in foreign currency, 30 per cent consists of the revenue we generate. And if you look at
05:22 the real value of the economy, it is about 10 per cent of the total.
06:03 There are factories there, and altogether they constitute about 70, 80 thousand workers, and of those people two and a half thousand are members of the
06:33 independent trade union.
07:06 When [Kuchma?] became a president of Ukraine there were about 10,000 members of this independent trade union, but during his presidency a number of privatisations took place, and those privatisations resulted in quite a few of the independent trade unions being destroyed or disseminated.
07:41 The biggest oligarchs who have properties are in metals.
09:53 The current state of affairs is that it's not too bad in that part of Ukraine. Until very recently the average salary was about £800, which is huge money by Ukrainian means, and there is also still quite a low unemployment rate. The recent deep economic crisis has started to affect
10:25 people working in iron ore mines and related industry, but he insists that compared to other parts of Ukraine it's not a bad position. It is widely accepted, or well known,
10:55 that such high salaries were achieved because of the independent trade union's efforts.
11:35 In your industry which is owned by different oligarchs, such as [Firtash?], in a very similar industry, for a very similar type of labour, wages are half of what we have in Kryvyi Rih.
14:03 The independent trade unions did take an active part in the Revolution of Dignity, and a lot of them were present on Euromaidan.
14:38 In spite of tectonic changes in the political life of Ukraine, very little has changed for the workers. In spite of the current government
15:09 sending a message that the revolution is over and what we now can build, what we need to build — we believe that the revolution is far from over, and their struggle is only on the rise.
15:56 The people who are now in power are the same people who were in power previously, and they have very strong links with Donetsk, with those clans, and with these self-proclaimed republic governments.
17:03 These authorities rely on loyal armed units. These are mainly unauthorised, illegal armed units, some of them
17:35 quite indistinguishable from criminal gangs. And if you look at people's opinion, he says that these aren't people who help to keep things in order. However, protests are still going on — for example a small tent town in the centre of the city was
18:05 only dismantled a couple of weeks ago, and they think that it's not for long: they are quite determined to put it back up again.
19:22 Yuriy says he keeps in close contact with his comrades in the self-proclaimed republics, Luhansk and Donetsk, and he says that the situation there is much worse — they have not been paid for seven, eight months. But he also says that the majority of the
19:54 people there don't really have a strong opinion about what's going on in the local area. They just want an improvement to their basic life. They are not that politically engaged, they just want to see improvement to their lives, to their wages.
21:01 A lot of activists were targeted. Several were killed, some had to flee because they received repeated threats to their lives; their families were also targeted. So when he talks to people and they tell him it's all right, or they are fine there, he sometimes wonders — they say it's because they know every telephone conversation can be intercepted. And that's an
21:33 uncertainty he needs to emphasise when he says that they are not politically engaged.
22:39 The state trade unions, which used to operate under the official Ukrainian Trade Union Federation alone, have now mainly become official trade unions of the self-proclaimed republics. In their documents — it's bizarre, because in their documents they still retain the official logo of the Ukrainian Trade Union Federation, and
23:09 they have added to it Luhansk Republic and Donetsk self-proclaimed Republic in the logos. But from what he can see, what they do mainly is recruit young people, whatever men are capable of fighting — they recruit them to the rebel forces. And that's probably the function, and that's probably why they get support and backing from the separatist governments.
24:14 Union members who were fighting on the other side, in the Anti-Terrorist Operation — a lot of them, he says, are feeling confused. They are not 100 per cent sure what this fight was about. And he says especially those who've been in captivity and then were released: they saw a human side there and they are not sure why it happened and why they were fighting.
24:44 About 80 per cent of so-called rebel forces are non-Ukrainians, and most
25:16 likely coming from Russia. So this is something which he says is also important to bear in mind.
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