Word: strikes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...strike spread with electrifying speed. The first 77 Kuzbass coal miners walked off the job in Mezhdurechensk on July 10. The following day 12,000 workers from five mines in the area joined them. They drew up a list of demands, including better pay, more vacation, higher pensions. Their overriding complaint: despite Gorbachev's calls for greater local autonomy in managing the economy, bureaucrats in Moscow continued to wield arbitrary control over the mines and were holding back the bulk of their profits. Many local officials openly sympathized with the strikers. "Why not? They breathe the same...
...strike soon spread to nine other cities in the Kuzbass. Grimy miners complained that when they came up after six hours underground, they could not find a bar of soap to wash with; the ration is one bar every two months. "Who can tell us what to feed our husbands?" shouted a woman protesting empty shelves in the stores. Many called for complete independence from central planning, insisting the miners could run things themselves...
Speaking to the national legislature, the Supreme Soviet, Gorbachev said party and government bodies as well as official trade unions should meet immediately to analyze the two-week strike that at its peak idled half the Soviet Union's one million workers in the coal industry and deprived vital factories of fuel...
Gorbachev said that because of the strike, governing councils should not wait for elections to make changes...
...legislator suggested strike committees be absorbed into local governing councils because they have proven they can get things done...