February 3, 1996
Web posted at: 10:15 p.m. EST (1515 GMT)
From Correspondents Steve Harrigan and Brent Sadler
MOSCOW (CNN) -- Russian miners went back to work Saturday after a two-day nationwide strike. The deal came late Friday night after the government agreed to pay back wages and pump more than $2 billion into the state-owned industry this year.
The quick settlement of the walk-out ended fears that the strike would cause shortages of heat and energy across the country. The strike continues, however, in Ukraine, where 800,000 miners have left their pits.
The strike, launched Thursday, closed mines across Russia and in neighboring Ukraine in what quickly became the largest flexing of industrial muscle since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Rogusol, the Russian coal-mining monopoly, reported 124 of 182 mining pits were shut down across Russia during the strike, which paralyzed the industry and shook the Russian goverment.
The coal union is Russia's biggest and most powerful labor organization. Its support helped Russian President Boris Yeltsin rise to power. But lengthy wage delays and industry cutbacks soured union officials on the president.
While the miners' campaign began as a protest over wages, Yeltsin's political foes tried turning the crisis to their own ends in a presidential election year.
The bad situation reflects the government's policies, said former Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov. The government wants to kill inflation at all costs, even if it means delaying wages, he added.
Defending the government, Fuel and Energy Minister Yuri Shafranik had drawn a skeptical response from miners' union representatives watching the debate in the Duma.
They dismissed as wildly inaccurate Shafranik's assertion that the coal industry was at the forefront of economic reforms and relative prosperity.
"Those guys are living on another planet...They don't know what they are talking about. It's hypocrisy."<
-- Union leader
Yeltsin's government was anxious to end the strike before it sets off a chain reaction in other industries.
A parallel strike by 200,000 Russian school teachers was called for the same reason -- some of them haven't been paid for three months.
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