Dear miners from the Çayeli copper mine Bakır İşletmeleri in Rize

You have my fullest support and solidarity in the fight against your unworthy treatment and ignorance of you and your demands. I myself worked underground as a coal miner for almost 35 years and am a trade unionist with heart and soul. At the two international conferences of the International Coordination of Miners, I was elected as the main coordinator.

It is a dangerous development when trade unionists are suppressed in their work. We must oppose this together and demand free trade union and political activity and a full and universal legal right to strike. You are right to fight for your interests and I congratulate you on this and wish you and your families much strength and perseverance. Like you, many of the more than 20 million miners in the world who extract the earth's raw materials under hard and dangerous conditions, but often suffer from very poor living conditions, are in a very bad way. Here in Germany the last hard coal mines were closed down and 250 miners who worked for the RAG were dismissed for operational reasons although there is still enough work. Currently they are fighting for their jobs. The principle of our miners' coordination is that we have started to cooperate internationally with the miners and our families and to coordinate our struggles in order to become a superior force against the international mining monopolies and the governments in bondage to them. At our founding conference in 2013 in Arequiepa/Peru we stated: "Today it is less and less possible to stand up against the international mining monopolies in isolation from each other and locally limited. What we need is the unity of workers worldwide." Only on the basis of concrete demands and objectives, achieved in the struggle against governments and corporations, can such coordination move forward. We have nothing to expect from the right-wing governments and their mendacious promises! I would like to encourage you to join us and join in. We can learn from each other and support each other. Our international programme of struggle and its demands unites us.
Heartfelt greetings and Glück Auf
Andreas Tadysiak,
Chief Coordinator of the International Miners' Coordination