Copper miners stage sit-in strike following several month delay in payments

Since Thursday miners have been on strike and staging a sit-in protest 1,000 meters underground in the Rudna copper mine in Polkowice. The protest is directed against the PBK Micon, which employs the miners and which for several months has not been paying them their bonuses, which constitute 50% of their wages. Micon's financial problems started in October, when Deutsche Bank terminated the company's loan. The total sum Micon owns its workers zl. 350,000. The mine management, to help the company, have begun to accelerated various payments to Micon so that on Monday zl. 150,000 could be transferred to its account. "I did not manage to persuade the miners to suspend the protest. With every hour of the strike, Micon's situation is getting worse," said Jan Wzorek, the head of PBK Micon's supervisory board on Sunday. (Rzeczpospolita, pp. A1, B2) K.Z.