Final Declaration for the 3rd International Miners’ Conference. No struggle must stand alone, anymore! Solidarity, coordination and cooperation across borders, that’s the order of the day!

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Published: Sunday, 24 September 2023 10:01

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The 3rd International Miners’ Conference (IMC), held from 31 August to 3 September 2023, took a great step forward concerning the international unification of the world’s miners. 35 experienced delegates from 19 countries¹ exchanged opinions and experiences and decided with great seriousness on a closer and more powerful cooperation in the future.

The actual reach of the conference is much wider still: entry into the Schengen area has been denied to 30 delegates from 18 countries due to visa harassment via the isolationist policy of the EU. The conference strongly protested against these rigorous bureaucratic measures which clearly aim to undermine the self-organised association of miners within their grassroots unions and organisations. They did not succeed! All of the suppressed delegations have been with us in one way or another.

After the 1st IMC in Arequipa, Peru, in 2013 and the 2nd IMC in Ramagundam, India, in 2017, this time the 3rd IMC convened in the potash mining area of Thuringia, Germany. Since the first conference, the number of miners worldwide has increased to 50 million – a huge force as well as responsibility!

The background of this increase is the greedy hunger of international mining monopolies, e.g. from the USA, China, India or the EU, and the fierce capitalist competition for raw materials, cheap labour and markets. This means not only economic war, but aggravating exploitation and oppression of miners. It also includes militarising whole mining areas as well as criminalisation, abduction and murdering unionists. One third of these 50 million miners are women, mostly located in the growing informal mining sector, which does not even stop at the exploitation of children. Wages are nowhere near enough, especially in view of horrendous inflation. Work safety is being cut back, resulting in tens of thousands of work accidents and thousands of dead miners. In particular, the expansion of open cast mining destroys nature and drives people out of their ancestral living space. This capitalist and imperialist domination, supported by state policies, leads not least to armed conflicts with endless suffering and to a global environmental catastrophe which threatens to destroy the natural foundations of human life.

The 27 country reports clearly showed this. But above all, they demonstrated the power of the international miners’ community. Tough struggles are being fought in numerous countries for higher wages, health and safety at work, political rights within companies including the right to strike. But still, these struggles often stand alone. That must change!

During the 1st and 2nd Miners’ Conferences in 2013 and 2017 important foundations for the coordination of our struggles have been laid and the rich experiences associated with that have been evaluated. But today we commit ourselves to take even more responsibility for each other in the future. We will further develop the unique features of our international solidarity and cooperation:

1. The actual, practical solidarity, coordination and cooperation of our struggles is crucial. We have to inform and learn from each other, also by means of mutual visits, as soon as during the run-up of struggles, and even more so in their course. This information, this international solidarity and the organisation of cooperation, from solidarity resolutions and donation campaigns to solidarity visits and even strikes, must go around the world. For this purpose, coordination has also been strengthened at continental levels.

2. We miners along with our families at the grass roots of trade unions and movements know the harsh reality in the factories and in our lives. We expand our competence and deepen our knowledge about the international mining monopolies and the raw material policies of imperialist countries. To this end, we have exchanged opinions and experiences in nine forums² and designed our future cooperation based on specific topics.

3. The 3rd International Miners' Conference reaffirmed the international days of struggle agreed upon (incl. May Day, Anti-War Day, Environmental Day of Struggle, and International Women's Day). Also, the idea of an international Miners’ Day of Struggle was born!

4. The reliable team of the International Coordination Group (ICG) has been reconfirmed (miners from Peru, Colombia, the Philippines, India, Morocco, Congo, Kazakhstan and Germany) and supplemented by a miner from Ukraine who could not be there in person because of the war. A new achievement is the election of deputies. Four preparatory groups for continental conferences have been founded.

5. We miners know that we must be able to rely on each other at work and in struggle! The thrilling culture of the conference including inspiring cultural evenings, was pure fraternization. It strengthens the firm friendship and basis of trust among each other.

6. We cannot win alone, we need many and strong alliance partners. We witnessed this here by the impressive participation of delegations of steel, dock and automotive workers, of the militant environmental, women’s and youth movements. Their contributions and solidarity enriched the conference.

7. The newly decided formation of an anti-imperialist platform of miners within the international miners’ coordination provides each person or individual organisation with the possibility to add the vigorous power of the workers to an anti-imperialist and antifascist “United Front”. Hence we’ll be able to fight, together with all the oppressed, against the imperialist perpetrators of global crises, without this being obligatory for everybody.

8. The conference has been self-organised and it went smoothly all the way! We give our thanks to those 250 helpers who fed us and cared for us!

9. Fundraising, volunteer work, partnership support – all this ensured the financial independence of the conference. It even reached a surplus of at least 10,000 €, constituting initial reserves for our future work.

10. One thing is certain: in four to five years’ time the 4th International Miners’ Conference will take place.

Let us take responsibility for each other and social progress for ourselves, for our children, workers in all countries, and for mankind as a whole!