You're reading: Svoboda activists picket DTEK office, demand that miners’ claims be satisfied

Around 20 activists of the Svoboda All-Ukrainian Union picketed the office of the largest private energy holding of Ukraine – DTEK – at the Parus business center in Kyiv, demanding that it meet all of the demands of the members of the Independent Trade Union of Sverdlovsk that seized the office of the director of DTEK Sverdlovantracit's Chervony Partyzan coalmine (Luhansk region) on Thursday, January 10.

“We demand that the conditions put forward by the miners be fulfilled. Our activists are inside the Parus business center now, right near the entrance of DTEK’s office. Andriy Illenko and other people’s deputies are with them,” Svoboda parliamentary faction MP Yuriy Syrotiuk told Interfax-Ukraine.

As reported, a group of 12 miners of Chervony Partyzan coalmine seized the office of the coalmine’s director on January 10 in order to put forward their demands to the owner of DTEK energy holding, Rinat Akhmetov, and Luhansk region Governor Volodymyr Prystiuk.

The miners that seized the coalmine director’s office demanded that DTEK Sverdlovantracit’s head cancel an instruction to change the enterprise’s form of organization. According to them, the implementation of the instruction may result in mass layoffs.

In addition, the miners demanded annual bonuses for DTEK Sverdlovantracit’s employees. They also want the actual time during which they work every day – nine to ten and a half hours – to count as labor hours.

The miners also demanded that the Independent Trade Union of Sverdlovsk be declared legal, a union agreement be signed between primary organizations, and that positions be returned to all of the dismissed members of the trade union.

In turn, DTEK stated it did not plan to dismiss employees of DTEK Sverdlovantracit (Luhansk region) during the optimization of the company’s structure.

The holding also said that most representatives of the Independent Trade Union of Sverdlovsk, who seized the office of the mine’s director on Thursday, were not employees of this enterprise and could not represent the interests of the workforce.

On the night of January 10 to January 11 the protesters left the director’s office and met with Luhansk region Governor Volodymyr Prystiuk in the morning.