Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan said only that the government is concerned about the weeklong strike action and hopes that production operations at the Zangezur Copper-Molybdenum Combine (ZCMC) will resume “as soon as possible.”
“Naturally, we are concerned because the fact that the leader of Armenia’s industry doesn’t operate for a week will obviously affect our economic indicators and tax receipts,” Papoyan told reporters.
But he stressed that it is up to the company’s management and workers as well as a national trade union to find a mutually acceptable solution.
The government is reluctant to intervene in the dispute despite holding a 22 percent stake in the ZCMC. The mining giant employing 4,600 people paid 100 billion drams ($250 million) in various taxes last year. The rest of its stock is owned by entities linked to Russian billionaire Roman Trotsenko.
Several hundred ZCMC workers began the strike on January 30 to demand a 50 percent pay rise and better working conditions. Their representatives and senior ZCMC executives again failed to reach an agreement during more talks held on Wednesday evening.
“They [the management] refused to even symbolically raise wages, demanding that [the striking workers] immediately return to work,” one of those representatives, Vahe Mkhitarian, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
“We will stay here as long as necessary,” said another worker blocking the entrance to the company’s premises in the southeastern town of Kajaran. “If necessary, we will stay here for months, until they meet our just demands.”
The management denounced the strike as illegal at the weekend, threatening its participants with “legal proceedings.” It argued that ZCMC workers already earn significantly more than the national average wage of 291,000 drams ($730) per month.
The ZCMC spokesman, Ara Margarian, confirmed on Thursday that the company has sent letters to two dozen striking workers demanding explanations for their walkout and disruption of production operations. He acknowledged that this may be a prelude to their dismissal.
Eduard Pahlevanian, the head of a labor union representing people working in Armenia’s mining and jewelry industries, said the protesting workers risk violating Armenian labor legislation. Pahlevanian said they have rejected the union’s proposal to suspend the strike and give the company two more weeks to consider their demands. He warned that they and their colleagues could now be left without their sole source of income.
“The combine must definitely operate,” added the union leader. “Its stoppage is a disaster for Armenia in the strategic and all other senses.”
For their part, organizers of the strike questioned Pahlevanian’s impartiality, saying that he seems to be siding with the company management in the dispute.
In what may have been a related development, two groups of men brawled in Kajaran on Wednesday. Local police intervened to stop the fight, detaining eight men in the process. Three of them remained under arrest on Wednesday, with the Investigative Committee conducting a formal inquiry into “hooliganism” involving firearms or other objects.
According to some media reports, the violence broke out when some of the striking workers physically stopped their colleagues from returning to work. Mkhitarian insisted, however, that the incident is not connected with the strike.
Meanwhile, the ZCMC insisted that “the vast majority” of its personnel remains opposed to the strike. It claimed that in recent days some of those workers made three attempts to return to work but faced threats, intimidation and even violence from several dozen protesters.
“The Company has already filed three criminal reports with Armenian law-enforcement agencies regarding those facts,” it said in a statement. “Some of the individuals obstructing the Company's re-opening have no connection with the Company at all.”