Usually, strikes in Armenia’s furthest mining towns are repressed before journalists can make it there from the capital city, Yerevan. The recent wildcat strike of laborers at Zangezur Copper and Molybdenum Combine (ZCMC) in the town of Kajaran was different. It lasted 11 days in February 2025 and was an exceptional time of solidarity and unionism – a flicker of hope in a country torn by war, apathy, and geopolitical alarmism.
During the strike, workers in the biggest and oldest mine in Armenia stood against the Russian owners, who had broken with Soviet-style labor management by increasing surveillance and dividing the workers. This was a eulogy to the proud unionist laborer class in Armenia, which pushed back on the government’s indifference towards workers.
VETERANS OF WAR RETURN TO WORK
“You’re lucky, the air is clean now, as mining is on hold. Usually, there’s a blue haze over the town from the drilling and explosions,” says my acquaintance Norik, a 35-year-old ZCMC miner on strike, who was heading to Kajaran in late January and gave me a lift. He wasn’t very talkative, but during the seven-hour drive from Yerevan, I learned that he was drafted to the war in Karabakh four years ago and is the only one in his group who survived. Even though Norik has had tinnitus since the war, he works in the noisy mine because it’s the only job available in Kajaran.
“I only survived the war because of my height. I dug my trench deep. The shelling didn’t reach me,” he said.
As we arrived at the mine, Norik stopped in front of the factory where strikers were gathered and checked in with his card to mark himself as “at work.” Most strikers were afraid of being fired if they didn’t show up to work, so they checked in at the factory, but then stayed idle. Norik didn’t look too afraid of being fired. He seemed like he no longer feared anything.
The strikers were getting ready for the night. Some were cutting wood for fire, others were making tea, and a few were setting up a tent. The strike had been announced the previous day, January 31. Management – under the auspices of its company trade union – retaliated by declaring the strike illegal. Besides preparing for the cold night, the strikers were brainstorming about their strategy and tactics. They set up a voting booth to mimic general elections, where one could vote in secrecy. If one-third of the 4,600 employees at ZCMC signed up, the wildcat strike would be considered legal under the Labor Code of Armenia. Over the next three days, about 2,600 people signed up.
INDUSTRIAL ARMENIA’S GHOSTS
A few minutes later, everyone gathered around the fire to hear updates from one of the organizers of the strike, a 34-year-old mechanic named Shavo.
“The management is inviting us to send a delegation to negotiate behind closed doors. What do you all think we should do? My take is that the bosses should come out and face their workers!” said Shavo, encouraging everyone to say what they thought about the offer.
A discussion followed. A delegation was formed.
The strikers summarized their demands. The main demand was a progressive pay increase that would also address pay inequalities.
The miners elaborated on the nuances of their unique salary system, which dates back to Soviet times. Miners in ZCMC are paid based on a four-grade system, where the most highly qualified employees are paid the most. However, the exams for climbing the grade ladder are plagued by nepotism and are widely seen by the miners as unfair. “I am the highest paid employee in my unit. I’m a fourth grader. I fight not so much for myself, but for my colleagues who are disproportionately underpaid,” says Karen, a 45-year-old flotator operator.
The strikers’ progressive increase demand was as follows: those earning up to AMD 300,000 (about USD 600) monthly should receive a 40 percent raise; those earning between AMD 300,000–500,000 (USD 1,000) should get a 30 percent raise; and those earning between AMD 500,000–1 million (USD 1,000–2,000) should get a 20 percent raise.
“There is no one here striking who is adequately paid for their labor. But there are many people who prey on our labor. The mine hired lots of useless staff, managers, and ‘manager types’ – just freeloaders. They come in their personal cars, stay in a fancy private hotel on top of the hill, above the dust and pollution. They are paid millions,” says one of the miners.
Another anachronism in the pay system is the deduction from each employee for the company’s trade union, irrespective of whether they joined it or not. Most strikers complained that the union is just a puppet organization that doesn’t really represent their interests.
The next day, the company tried to discredit the strike when it published the grade system of pay for each job type, arguing that the strikers were lying about their real pay. This incensed the strikers, who claimed that the list represented their gross salaries and so did not reflect the various deductions and taxes they lose from their wages.
“Let them disclose their own pay. Let them disclose how much CEO Roman Khudoliy is paid,” said one of the strikers.
THE COMPANY
The 74-year-old “industry giant” Zangezur Copper and Molybdenum Combine has augmented its scale of production and profits considerably in recent years. However, the workers’ pay is the same as before. “If molybdenum prices skyrocket, why does our pay stay the same?” asks one of the strikers.
Minerals are Armenia’s main export, and the ZCMC is the largest mining operation in the country and one of ten leading molybdenum producers in the world. The metal, prized for its resistance to corrosion, is widely used in high-strength steel and superalloy production. Demand for it is tied to oil, gas, and petrochemical infrastructure, but its use is increasingly salient in the green industry. The mine plays a significant role in the country’s economy, which is otherwise volatile because of blockades, the absence of communication routes, deindustrialization, and constant war. The mine was privatized in 2004, with 60 percent of the company going to a German stainless-steel processor called Cronimet and the rest of the shares to local oligarchic companies. The value of the contract between Cronimet and the Armenian government was USD 132 million.
The last six years have been turbulent for the company. In 2018, Armenia underwent a regime change. Anti-government protests overthrew the oligarchic government of Serzh Sargsyan and brought ex-journalist Nikol Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party to power. Pashinyan promised to build democracy and rule of law. He also announced plans to nationalize the shares that oligarchs had in ZCMC, the biggest taxpayer in the country. This was a populist statement that appealed to Kajaranians as well as the larger mineral-rich Syunik region. The previous year, Armenia’s new government had already required mining companies to disclose the names of owners with over 10 percent control, and later, the government moved to acquire some of the shares. The company responded by announcing changes in ownership. German Cronimet declared it had sold its shares, and six new owners were revealed, including German citizen Thomas Peter Hayley and Russia’s former health minister Mikhail Zurabov, who each owned 12.5 percent stakes.
In September 2021, Russian billionaire Roman Trotsenko entered the game when he bought 75 percent of the company’s shares and donated some of them to the Armenian government amidst the tax authority’s raid on the mine and the subsequent ban on further sales of ZCMC shares until tax evasion charges had been heard in court.
Former owner Mikhail Zurabov was upset with these transactions and sued the mine. In 2024, he filed a USD 1.2 billion lawsuit against Armenia, claiming its investments in ZCMC were negatively impacted by what it alleged to be a “politically motivated campaign” by the government to secure a significant stake in the plant.
While the international arbitration case is ongoing, ZCMC is subjected to new scrutiny locally. The Armenian general prosecutor recently revealed that ZCMC shares were manipulated by the former oligarchic regime in Armenia. According to the recent indictment, former president Serzh Sargsyan’s son-in-law, Mikael Minasyan, acquired 25 percent of the shares by registering the deal through shell companies and satellite tycoons, using the company for money laundering schemes.
However, criminal cases haven’t hindered operations. In 2024, the company increased production of molybdenum and copper concentrates and paid AMD 33 billion in dividends and AMD 73 billion in taxes to Armenia – a 44 percent increase over 2023. The next year, Armenia exported 342,000 tons (worth USD 558 million) of copper concentrate, 78 percent of it to China.
These windfall profits have translated into deteriorating working conditions in the mine, where workers still use Soviet-era tools in highly unsafe environments. ZCMC has also seen increasingly intrusive management strategies, with nearly constant surveillance of workers on and off the job (discussed below). These were some of the conditions that led ZCMC workers to strike.
“They just started mining more. There were two high mountains here. In 2021, they dug them all up fast. Now the mountain is gone. As the Armenian state made demands, the company started mining more and with less care to the environment. If this process continues, maybe in a few years, the minerals will be depleted and Armenia will be left with huge environmental consequences and a ghost mine,” says Gegham, one of the miners at the protest site, arguing that change has to come fast before it’s too late.
A SOVIET-ERA MINE IN AGONY
Everyone at the mine pointed out the managers’ luxurious hotel, perched atop the mountain, as a stark symbol of inequality. Once a sanatorium for miners to recover from their toxic work environment, it is now reserved exclusively for managerial staff. The sanitorium is a vestige of Armenia’s Soviet past: Soviet workers subjected to hazardous conditions were often granted free or subsidized vouchers (путёвки) to stay at a sanatorium. Miners, chemical factory workers, metalworkers, and anyone else in high-risk or toxic environments were eligible.
In more recent years, management has been increasingly hiring more office workers than miners, investing in bureaucracy as conditions worsened for laborers. The miners were averse to seeing white-collar types flood the premises while they worked in dirt and dust. They have concluded that these people don’t actually assist in the labor process in the mine. Although the rise of managerialism and corporatism is not a new phenomenon, it is new to Kajaran, where Soviet-era labor pride is still alive.
After hearing speeches from proud workers criticizing the “non-proletarian freeloaders,” a friend of mine whispered, “Are we in a time machine? Are these people ghosts?” He was stunned by the solidarity and union spirit, so foreign to the vulgar neoliberalism that has dominated Armenia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Kajaran is the last relic of Soviet-Armenian industry and urban planning. The copper and molybdenum combine opened in 1951. Everyone’s parents and grandparents worked there. The town’s planned economy still remains untouched by migration and labor deterritorialization. Unlike other industrial giants – such as Yerevan’s Nairit rubber factory, which eventually went bankrupt in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union’s economic interconnectedness – the Kajaran factory survived. It is hailed as the giant of industrial Armenia, which has had to adjust to privatization and oligarchic exploitation. As Armenians from other towns were forced into labor migration, most often going to Russia and sending remittances to their families, Kajaranians didn’t have to migrate. They know that they owe this fact to the natural resources of the Kajaran mountains. The mine is, therefore, still a core part of Kajaranian identity.
“If we don’t work, no one else will work in our mine. The Kajaran underground belongs to the people who live here. We heard threats from the managers that they will bring in cheap Indian labor if we organize a strike. That’s impossible because we won’t let it happen,” said one miner, Rudik, warning against the use of scab labor by the company.
FLYING ROCKS AND NO AIR TO BREATHE
The strikers’ other demands – after wage increases – included health insurance and safer working conditions.
“Everyone here has a hernia, lung problems, or tinnitus, and many have had stent placement surgeries to prevent heart attacks. The level of noise, vibration, and dust exceeds all standards and norms. We should be checked and treated, but we aren’t. The health insurance we have is just a token,” one miner told me.
The open-pit mine is not as dangerous as the underground mine, but it still has health risks, especially with the 1960s-era technology still in use. The conveyor is worn out and throws off ore, which workers have to collect with shovels. The ore travels from the mine site to crushing stations, then to the factory for flotation – a chemical process that separates molybdenum and copper from the ore. The main work at the mine site involves driving huge trucks with tons of ore to the crushing stations. The main risk to drivers is being crushed by rocks or stalling on mountainous roads, especially during the night, since the factory operates around the clock.
While the crushing units are less obviously hazardous, they still impact workers’ health in a gradual way. “The crushing creates a constant thick cloud of dust. You can’t see two meters away. In the past, there was watering machinery to bring the dust down at least, but now they don’t use them. They save water and money on our lungs,” complains Hamlet, who works in the fine-crushing factory, which is the worst in terms of the quantity of dust.
All of the equipment is old, rusty, and constantly in need of repair, except for one mill that was manufactured in the United States in the 2000s. When visitors come to the mine, they are taken to the “American” mill. “When they were opening the fancy American mill, they put curtains around the small and medium crushing unit, so that no one could see the conditions we work in,” says Henzel, who, like Hamlet, works in the dustiest of the crushing facilities.
“The noise and vibration are so intense that it affects my brain. When I go home, I have to turn the TV up really loud, which disturbs my family. It affects my brain, my mental health,” says another miner.
Workers assembled at the entrance to the ZCMC mine.
Outside the mine.
SURVEILLANCE ON THE JOB
The pay disparities and safety issues have not been the only trigger for the rise of laborism in Kajaran. Management has been changing how work is monitored and contracted since 2022, opting for surveillance and increased atomization of the labor force. The whole operation is now monitored by surveillance cameras, and workers pass through strict airport-style security checks when they enter and leave the premises.
During the strike, workers leaked smartphone videos from inside the factory because many on Facebook doubted that miners were still using shovels in an age of high-tech machinery and artificial intelligence. The videos, which reveal clouds of dust and constant banging, were posted by anonymous pages, as the company has a strict policy about filming. “Zangezur mine is a much more closely controlled compound than even the army. It’s a high-security facility – almost national-security level,” says another worker, who is paranoid that management has ears and eyes everywhere.
“They say the cameras are for security. But that’s bullshit. With these cameras, they’re just controlling us. They don’t have cameras in their offices,” says Rudik.
Besides the cameras, management forces employees to live a “healthy” lifestyle. Since September last year, workers have been subjected to alcohol tests. “They even call local restaurants every night to check that we are not having a party. It’s impossible to tolerate. We feel like we don’t have any private life,” says one worker.
“We are happy to have stable work, but it turns out the price we pay is very high. The mine takes our health, our time, and also our dignity,” says Rudik.
CRUSHING THE STRIKE SPIRIT
For the 11 days of the strike, management carried out a smear campaign against the strikers by making defamatory statements and invoking national-security concerns.
Still, the strikers were more affected by the reaction of the Armenian state: “The so-called democratic regime doesn’t protect us. We have been striking for seven days, and the prime minister hasn’t uttered a word. We were so happy when the government nationalized some of the mines. But nothing changed for us.”
On the seventh night of the strike, emotions were tense. The Armenian government still hadn’t commented on the strike of the country’s biggest industrial complex. The management of the ZCMC mine was still vilifying the strikers and threatening them with dismissal. ZCMC-sponsored television channels were airing vox-pop reporting with soundbites from people from other cities in Armenia condemning the strikers and calling them “traitors” in a country at war. (Armenia has been in bloody conflict with its eastern neighbor, Azerbaijan, since the 1990s over the Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) region, an Armenian-populated enclave in Soviet Azerbaijan. In 2020, the Azerbaijani forces regained control over NK, as well as Azerbaijani regions that Armenia occupied in the 1990s. The 2020 war took at least 4,500 Armenian soldiers’ lives, leaving the country in turmoil and providing rhetorical cover for ZCMC’s strike breaking.)
Strikers knew the smear campaign was a company strategy to crush the strike. Still, they were feeling worn down. At the fire on the seventh night, Shavo had to calm everyone down. “Guys, don’t worry. If we win, they can’t punish us. We’re doing all right. We’ve already won: the ore isn’t being pulled out. It’s time to materialize our victory and monetize it,” he said, standing up on a rock to be heard by everybody.
The next morning, on the eighth day of the wildcat strike, Shavo and seven other miners were fired for “organizing unauthorized actions,” as per the labor code. Shavo was calm during the Facebook address he gave: “I am accused of leading the protest. Well, I did. I had to do what I was able to do,” he said.
On the 11th day, the strike succumbed to pressure and intimidation from the company, and workers came to an agreement with the managers. A negotiation brokered by parliamentarians and the Confederation of Trade Unions in Armenia – another relic from Soviet Armenia – ended the strike. Some hailed it as a victory because as the company promised to raise salaries by 20 percent. However, these promises were neither backed by commitment nor clarity and weren’t formalized in a contract. They did effect a pay raise for some but not for others, and pay inequalities were exactly what the strike had been fighting against.
After the end of the strike, eight of the strikers were scapegoated and punished for allegedly organising it. In May the ZCMC appealed to court to freeze their assets as collateral for damage done to the company. The court froze 4.7 billion drams (10 million EURO), a sum impossible to repay for eight miners. The other miners have not been punished, and even got a slight pay rise.
It’s also hard to call the end of the strike a success when nothing has been done with regards to ventilation and dust management, let alone that eight strikers remain fired.
It’s been two months since the strike. Life in Kajaran has returned to what it was before – a high-security compound, out of journalists’ view, without independent monitoring or inspection of working conditions. Strikers who blew the whistle with detailed videos from inside the mine are now back to atomized work and life. A striker wrote me a short message after I got back to my life in Yerevan. “I miss it,” he said. “The strike?” I asked. “Not so much the strike, but its atmosphere.”
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