Zenica Miners Stay Underground, Demand Minister's Signature

Thirteen miners in Zenica spent another night underground in the Raspotocje pit, as the protest over unpaid wages entered its eighth day. For most of them it was the seventh night below ground at the Zenica Brown Coal Mine (RMU Zenica), a company operating within the Elektroprivreda BiH public utility group. The dispute, in neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina, is not about how much the miners are paid, but about whether they get paid at all.

The miners are owed three wages, for May, June and July. The protest began last week, with miners rotating shifts underground since then, and the number staying below ground has grown to thirteen after nine second shift workers were joined by members of the RMU Zenica Trade Union’s Main Board. The pressure, the union says, is aimed at the relevant authorities of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and at the Elektroprivreda BiH management.

What do the miners want before they leave the pit?

They want paper, not promises. The only condition for ending the protest is a written guarantee from the responsible minister and an exact date for payment of the overdue wages, and the minister in question is Vedran Lakic, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s minister of energy, industry and mining. Until that document exists, the miners are staying underground.

RMU Zenica Trade Union representative Alija Selman told reporters outside the mine that the miners will not back down from their demand:

We received support from our colleagues at RMU Breza. We also have the support of the umbrella miners’ union, through its president Sinan Husic. The miners are waiting for Minister Vedran Lakic to confirm in writing that the wages will be paid, and then we would come out of the pit.

That support is not a formality. The umbrella miners’ union, led by Sinan Husic, and colleagues from the mine in Breza have thrown their weight behind the protest in Raspotocje, and the problem facing the mines in that canton is nearly identical.

Health institute extends insurance validation to September 6

One of the protest’s original demands was the right to have health insurance booklets validated. The Zenica-Doboj Canton Health Insurance Institute has since temporarily allowed validation for employees at three coal mines in the canton, through September 6. That concession has not moved the miners in Raspotocje out of the pit.

The reason lies in the sum behind it. The debt owed to the Institute by the three mines under the Elektroprivreda BiH group exceeds 175 million convertible marks, and the Institute has given a thirty day deadline for repayment to begin in installments. Miners in Kakanj and Breza cannot get their booklets validated either, because of unpaid contributions. The miners in the pit describe these stopgap measures as firefighting and say they will no longer accept partial promises.

Tension is rising, and no doctor has been down the pit yet

Food, water and medicine are delivered to the miners in the pit every day. Bahrudin Coloman, head of the Raspotocje union branch, stayed on the surface specifically to keep his underground colleagues supplied, since his own second shift workers stayed below. There had been no doctor’s visit to the pit as of August 10, but the mood is shifting by the day.

There has been no intervention by a doctor, but nervousness among the people is growing, which is understandable. It is not easy to be in the pit for seven nights, eight days.

That was Coloman, describing the eighth day of the protest. Alongside it, the regular, mandatory work in the pit, drainage and degassing, continues, carried out daily by teams of up to six people. They too go down underground.

Director heading into the pit as the mine’s future stays unresolved

Coloman announced that RMU Zenica director Mirsad Sahbazovic was also expected to go down into the pit, to bring the miners fresh information and proposals from the Federation’s Ministry of Energy, Industry and Mining and from Elektroprivreda BiH.

The demands, however, do not stop at three wages. The miners are also seeking regular payment of statutory contributions, full stabilization of the company’s operations and a clear strategy from the relevant authorities and the utility group for the future of the Zenica mine, where production has been halted repeatedly in recent times. Three unpaid wages are the trigger; the mine’s status is the underlying dispute.

The deadline set by the Health Insurance Institute expires on September 6. The date for the wage payment, the one keeping thirteen men asleep in Raspotocje, no one has written down yet.