Strike at Bulgaria’s Maritsa Iztok Mines Ends
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The strike at Bulgaria’s Maritsa Iztok Mines was declared at an end on January 22, 2012 after marathon negotiations produced a dawn agreement on bonuses and improvement of working conditions.
The agreement, signed at 6 a.m., provides for mine employees to get bonuses of about 300 leva (about 150 euro).
More employees will be taken on and unions and management agreed that there should be modernization and improved efficiency and productivity at Maritsa Iztok, the largest provider of coal to Bulgaria’s thermal power plants.
Union leaders pronounced themselves satisfied with the agreement.
Bulgaria cut off all electricity exports at 1 a.m. on January 21 because of the strike. The miners went on strike at 8:00 p.m. on January 15, demanding 1000 leva bonuses for each employee for the company’s record coal output in 2011. The labor stoppage has cost the mining company more than one million leva a day.
Source: (Jan. 22, 2012) The Sofia Echo
