Reuters reported that thousands of workers at ArcelorMittal steel mill in Kazakhstan staged a 3 hour strike on Friday and warned of wider action to back demands for a 30% pay hike.

The labor union at ArcelorMittal Temirtau which said 3,000 staff joined the first ever stoppage at the plant has rejected a company offer of a 10% rise and has called for a halt in job cuts.

Mr Vladimir Dubin head of the steelworkers union at ArcelorMittal Temirtau said "This is the first ever organized strike at the plant."

He said that "There were sporadic disturbances in Temirtau back in the 1950s, but this is the first such strike since then. Steel workers wanted a 30% increase in wages on top of a 7.4% adjustment for last year and demanded a moratorium on job cuts.”

He also said "If we don't find a compromise solution, we have a lawful right to notify (management) that we start an open-ended strike."

Mr Dubin said wages average KZT 115,000 above the national average of 98,000, but up to 70% of steelworkers get only between KZT 50,000 and 80,000 per month.

The strike at Temirtau where Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev worked for a decade and where ArcelorMittal employs one tenth of the 170,000 population highlighted the risk for authorities of stoppages in one industry centres.

But ArcelorMittal says it is facing problems selling its Kazakh output after losing access to its key market in Iran in the wake of western sanctions against Tehran. Mr Vijay Mahadevan chief executive of ArcelorMittal Temirtau reiterated a proposal to raise wages by 10% and said negotiations could resume in October if the market stabilized.

Source - Reuters

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