With demands met, employees of Zangezur Mine stop their strike

• 4 min read

On Monday evening, on the 11th day of the strike, the employees of the Zangezur Copper and Molybdenum Combine (ZCMC) stopped their strike, noting that an agreement had been reached with the management to resolve all the issues raised.

‘Guided by the state interest and the principle of social partnership and demonstrating a constructive approach, we have decided to resume the working regime of ZCMC’, Vahe Mkhitaryan, one of the strike coordinators, announced on Facebook Live, insisting that they had ‘legitimate reasons’ for their strike.

Mkhitaryan added that the strike was an ‘achievement that we can congratulate ourselves on’, saying it had succeeded in ‘raising the corporate culture to another level’.

The employees of Armenia’s largest taxpayer launched their strike on 31 January in demand of better working conditions and pay. The company and its trade union have claimed the strike was held ‘in violation of the labour legislation’ and the strikers’ demands were ‘unrealistic’.

Earlier on Monday, the Zangezur Mine announced that it would increase the total wage fund ‘by an average of 20%’, and that they would ‘apply the new wage system in the main production facilities within a month of the resumption of production’.

In addition, they promised to launch a new tender in February to choose a new insurance company to meet the requirements of employees. They also ‘guarantee[d]’ to install ‘modern, highly efficient ventilation and aspiration systems’ in the main production facilities ‘no later than the end of 2025’.

Besides all the three main reasons for the strike, which the mine management promised to address, Mkhitaryan also mentioned the ‘breakdown of the established order of communication between the management and employees’.

Mine staff ‘was used by third [party] forces’

In turn, Roman Khudoly, the mine’s general director, blamed an unnamed group of people for planning the ‘illegal’ strike and ‘misleading and using the combine's staff to achieve their personal goals’. Khudoly claimed the group intended ‘to gain control of the combine, to take control of all material flows’.

Khudoly’s statement came on Sunday night, as the Zangezur Mine posted an interview of him with Syunik TV on Facebook, which came to be his public appearance since the strikes.

Khudoly said that he had fired the eight strikers who he claimed were being ‘used by third [party] forces’, but also said that no one else would be fired and also pledged that the combined promises would be fulfilled.

The eight active strikers were fired last week, as the strike entered its seventh day and two meetings between the management and the strikers failed to result in an agreement.

On Monday night, striker Mkhitaryan, who was among those fired, said that they also reached an agreement with the mine management regarding the ‘exclusion of persecution against protest participants, [and the] review of the orders for the dismissal of eight protest participants’.

The Zangezur Combine is the largest tax-paying company in Armenia, with the Armenian government owning 21.8% of the total shares — 15% of the shares were granted to the government in 2021 by Industrial Company, while another 6.8% were granted by AMP Holding in 2022.

After a week of striking, the management told the media last Friday that ‘the company suffered a loss of about ֏400 million ($1 million) per day, and the state suffered a loss of more than ֏100 million ($252,000) per day in taxes alone’.

As the Armenian government was reluctant to take action, with Economy Minister Gevorg Papoyan dismissing that the government has a responsibility to resolve the issue, the strikers voiced that the ‘crisis is getting worse’ and ‘a deadlock has been created’.

On the last day of the strike, Armen Khachatryan, a member of the ruling Civil Contract faction, originally from Syunik, reportedly mediated the talks between the management and the strikers.

Armenia

Zangezur mine

Labour Rights

Arshaluys Barseghyan •

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A journalist since 2016, Arshaluys specialises in fact-checking and open-source investigations, with a focus on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, politics, and social and gender issues. She is also a strong advocate for media literacy and closely follows Armenia’s media landscape.