Day: May 20, 2025

Last night, Georgian Manganese officially announced that negotiations with the protesting workers had failed, and that the workers have been permanently dismissed. The company justified the decision to terminate the protesting workers by saying that it is operating at a loss and needs to undergo reorganization. However, the available information suggests the exact opposite.

Tamta Mikeladze is the Director of the Equality Policy Program at the Center for Social Justice

The relationship between Georgian Manganese (and its contractor, Chiatura Management Company) and its workers has been marked by long-standing tensions, strikes, hunger strikes, and protests in Chiatura and Tbilisi. In 2023, workers protested poor conditions and wage disparities, resulting in a 12% inflation-linked wage increase and an agreement to resolve ore quota issues. By December, protests erupted over a 12-hour workday without corresponding pay, leading to an agreement to equalize hourly wages for 8-hour and 12-hour shifts.

Tensions escalated in early 2025 when the company shut down underground mining operations in Chiatura, leaving 3,500 workers unemployed and unpaid. Protests demanding nationalization, wage payments, and a financial investigation followed. The situation worsened with the arrest in May of four individuals for assaulting a mine director and six miners who were on a hunger strike. Despite plans to reorganize, workers opposed the restructuring due to fears of layoffs and lack of transparency, calling for a state takeover of the mines and a fund to address the region’s economic hardships.

Not as poor?

Georgian Manganese is Georgia’s largest mining company, holding a 40-year license to exploit 16,430 hectares of land since 2006. The company says it is in dire financial straits, but this claim is hard to verify. Although the company is legally required to submit annual financial balance statements, it prefers not to do so. The company leadership prefers to pay a GEL 30,000 fine and keep its balance sheets off the record.

But even a cursory glance at the company’s operations suggests that the story of losses is grossly exaggerated. Ferroalloys, including manganese, are one of Georgia’s leading exports. From 2012 to 2023, ferrous alloys worth 3.8 billion USD were exported from Georgia. In addition, manganese dioxide exports from Georgia to Russia have jumped fivefold since 2021, and Georgian Manganese is the only company mining this raw material.

The company founded 12 subsidiaries, which it still owns. Most of these were established in 2019-2020 – the period when the company claims to have incurred financial losses. These affiliated companies make solid profits. For example, Manganum Logistics LLC has earned over GEL 51 million in profits over five years, with profits growing annually. Another company that trades manganese and coal, Steel International Trading, reports GEL 2.1 billion in revenue and GEL 288 million in profit over six years.

If the company is expanding and its subsidiaries are profitable, how can it claim to be operating at a loss and lay off workers on those grounds? Surely, the government has a duty to investigate this apparent mismatch. This is where the political ties come in.

Something is apparently protecting the Georgian Manganese from the law. Take environmental damage, for example. From 2013 to 2017, the company was fined GEL 416 million for causing environmental harm. But in subsequent years, these fines were mostly written off. Without apparently improving its practices, the imposed fines plummeted to meager GEL 950 from 2018 to 2020.

The company’s CEO is Mikhail Sotskiy, a Russian citizen who, according to journalistic investigations, has ties to Bidzina Ivanishvili. The company management’s links to the ruling Georgian Dream party are in the open. In recent years, the company’s owners and executives have donated 1,085,000 GEL to the party. Giorgi Chelidze, a director of several of the company’s subsidiaries, personally donated 40,000 GEL to the party in 2024. He is also associated with several companies that received government subsidies in various forms: GEL 691,000 from the “Produce in Georgia” program, GEL 145,000 from procurement contracts, and 35,000 sq. m. of land through direct (i.e., uncompetitive) privatization. The same company lent GEL 138 million to Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Cartu Foundation in 2022.

Are Georgian Manganese and Georgian Dream working in concert, violently suppressing the Chiatura workers? If so, not only are they eliminating jobs and depriving people of their right to work and access to a basic income, but they are also destroying and emptying the city, pushing the locals out.

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