Trade Unions at the polish Oils and Gas Company Call for Privatisation and Threaten to Strike

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The entities that form the Polish Oil and Gas Company (PGNiG), a State Treasury Company, are currently holding protest referendums. Trade Unions claim privatisation of the company and launch of the PGNiG IPO already in July. The Ministry of State Treasury resists the pressure. Its representatives are trying to postpone the IPO until Autumn 2005.

The transformation of the State-owned gas monopoly are in close connection to the EU directive regarding the common rules of the internal market of natural gas, (2003/55/EC), which has been applied by Polish legislation in the amendment to the Power Law Act, dated March 2005.

The issue of privatisation of Polish Oil and Gas Company (Polskie Górnictwo Naftowe i Gazowe SA, PGNiG SA), which owns all gas warehouses, domestic transfer gas pipes and rights to the transit gas pipes systems, has been widely discussed since 1996 (PL0411106S). According to Ewa Mańska, the head of the Independent and Self-Governing Trade Union Solidarity (Niezależny Samorządny Związek Zawodowy, NSZZ Solidarność) unit in PGNiG, the privatisation process had been going too slow. Trade union members, who support the management’s efforts for the fast IPO, hope that 61,000 former and current employees of the company obtain the due portion of corporate shares. Likewise the French group Gaz de France and the Russian Gazprom are interested in the fast privatisation of PGNiG.

The PGNiG IPO was originally scheduled for June 2005. But on 2 June, the day of the issuance prospectus publication, a decision was taken to postpone the initial offering. At first the government was for conducting the IPO between 2 and 25 September. However, the State Treasury Minister Jacek Socha made reservations that the IPO should have been preceded by political debate. The parliamentary Opposition shared the government’s opinion with this respect, namely the Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) party and the Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska, PO), which rank the highest in the prospective election polls with 18% and 25% of the votes. Leaders of these two parties are afraid of the risk of losing state control over the infrastructure of natural gas supplies, which is also connected with Polish market’s dependency on the Russian supplies. Therefore the opposition postulates that important decisions should be left to the consideration of the next government - after this year’s general elections, which are going to take place on 25 September. One of such important decisions would be the dismissal of the PGNiG chief, Marek Kossowski, anticipated by PO and PiS. The opposition claims Kossowski, closely connected to the Democratic Left Alliance (Sojuszem Lewicy Demokratycznej, SLD), allowed certain shortcoming in the PGNiG privatisation concept.

The managing board of PGNiG does not agree with these accusations, neither do the trade unions, which are trying to exert pressure on the government. For this reason the representation of the staff took part in the meeting of the State Treasury Ministry (Ministerstwo Skarbu Państwa, MSP) council devoted to the privatisation of PGNiG. This was unprecedented as the State treasury is the only ministry that has no formal platform of consultation with social partners. Besides, the state treasury ministry has never before allowed representatives of the staff of the privatised companies to observe, let alone participate, in the council meetings. Nevertheless, the staff’s representatives’ visit proved ineffectual, as did the flagging of the PGNiG premises as a sign of protest against the Sejm resolution calling on the government to postpone the date of IPO. Another action undertaken by the trade unions in the first days of June was a manifestation in front of the State Treasury Ministry. During the manifestation the protesters warned they were ready to aggravate the forms of protest if the government didn’t change its decision to postpone the PGNiG’s stock market debut. Next, on 6 June a strike committee of the company gathered in Wałbrzych and took the decision to initiate the collective dispute procedure. The strike committee issued a letter to the Prime Minister, in which it accused the Ministry of State Treasury of failing to perform its duty by breaching on the governmental programme of PGNiG restructuring and privatisation. In mid-June the unions started to prepare for the general strike. To this end referendum procedures were initiated in corporate units.

The PGNiG unions have become the main ally of the managing board in the pursuit of the fastest privatisation. It seems however that the essential motivation of the staff is to use the pre-election period to obtain more advantages - a sort of political benefit on the occasion of the corporate privatisation.

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