The first presidium meeting of PRUP was held on 12 January 2016. Sergey Yunak, the PRUP President, opened the meeting, wished everyone a happy New Year and told about strategic sectors of the presidium works in a new year. 
– In 2014 we used to be originators of the increase in wages for all “PavlogradCoal”, – said Sergey Yunak to all the presidium members. – Andrey Smirnov, DTEK Director on coal mining and processing, told us about debts of the Energy Market against DTEK. We made a decision and suggested the DTEK management that we should demand funds from the Energy market ourselves and DTEK’s task was to perform everything that PRUP requested. So 2015 was devoted to our struggle against the state authority, President’s administration, Verkhovna Rada, Cabinet of Ministers, etc. What did it result in? You saw it well – it resulted in an insult to mineworkers, our members, received from all TV channels. Therefore, we are supposed to concentrate on the dialogue with DTEK in 2016. We are not going to refuse our arrangements performed by the Central Committee of Coalmining Industry of Ukraine regarding Verkhovna Rada since it’s a matter of or social guarantees. We need to start from our last year demands when we sent a lot of letters to the DTEK management and no responses from them to our questions: increase in wages to the inflation rate, our offer regarding coal sell for the health improvement of our employees? And many other letters which were not replied. That is the result of their attitude to our organization. They don’t need to “write off” everything to the war and other cataclysms. The Council of chairmen of DTEK companies which was established on our initiative does not exist more. So we should revise our health improvement program. The Collective Agreement is our strategic issue. It has not been revised for two years. Under the Law the signers (administration and Unions) should report annually. Our task is to demand to hold a meeting with the report within six month of this year. The Collective Agreement is the negotiations with administration to discuss our proposals which can be accepted. It relates to the labor safety which is not supported by funds sufficiently, and all staff feels it, including the PPE. Sergey Yunak proposed to initiate a conclusion of a new Collective Agreement during the impending meeting with DTEK. – A Collective Agreement working group should hold meetings even once a month. We will have to review and read some issues which are still urgent. Nonparticipation of DTEK administration reserves our right to complain to appropriate authorities that administration disregards Unions initiatives to hold negotiation on the Collective Agreement. The current strategy assumes that our work with DTEK should become a prerogative, – summarized Sergey Ivanovich Yunak. 
Then the PRUP leader dwelled on some issues which are the keys to increase social standards: – A single social insurance fee has decreased from 36 to 22. This money remains at the owner and funds can be accumulated. The inflation level was 3840% last year. It’s necessary to increase salaries and preserve bonus payment system. Then we will see a real increase in wages. Everybody remembers Hay Group when one of the most important terms and conditions was the 15% increase in salaries – reminded Sergay Yunak. – Then the 1.0 ratio factor – is the difference of the average salary in the industry and at our sector. This is also the increase in utilities rates, essential goods prices. All these conditions require the increase in salaries not less then 25%. This is a key issue which we want to raise during the meeting with DTEK representatives. Additional issue was associated with salaries at DTEK transportation trucking company. Тhere are 24 salaries at the company. That speaks of unprofessional approach in a manual mode regarding drivers’ salaries. We are expecting to receive from DTEK an accurate schedule of debt payments which have been open since August 2015. The presidium meeting reviewed the following issues associated with «DTEK Service» operation: work on holidays and days off, twice increase in prices for sanatorium “Samara” vouchers. A separate issue concerning «DTEK Service» operation will be included into the agenda of the unions meting with the DTEK representatives. ЕlеnаТkach, “Voice of a Mineworker” newspaper editor | 
