What The Hell America!

Nestled in the mountains, Chiatura is known for its picturesque ropeways and brightly colored cable cars that transport people up and down the steep slopes, often advertised as a tourist attraction. Founded in the late nineteenth century around manganese mining, Chiatura thrived during the Soviet era as a mining hub, with other industries also flourishing. The town’s stunning theater building opened in 1949, adorned with murals of workers, and stands as a testament to its rich history. But now that past is overshadowed by an uncertain future, as the town faces the collapse of its main industry.

With the demise of the USSR, Chiatura — along with the rest of Georgia — came to a screeching halt. The town lost 50 percent of its population in post-Soviet years when national production capacity fell by 80 percent. Factories were looted, dismantled, and sold for scrap. Through privatization schemes, workers, desperate for basic necessities, traded the “shares” they were given in their workplaces for as little as a bag of sugar. As a result, industries quickly fell into the hands of a few individuals, who often sold off the assets. For many Georgians, the 1990s remain a deeply traumatic period, remembered as the worst time in living memory. The scars of that era are so profound that people go to great lengths to ensure it is never repeated.

Since 2005, the reopening of Chiatura’s mines has brought jobs and a degree of economic stability to the town. However, the mines have also been a locus of exploitation. Over the years, there have been relentless protests and strikes against poor labor practices, ecological devastation, and temporary closures that have plagued the industry.

Today Chiatura faces the greatest crisis yet, with the closure of underground mining. Not only does mining directly employ thousands of people, but their jobs make all kind of other businesses possible, from cafés to grocery stores, salons, car washes, and so on. While we were resting, a Chiaturian woman told me: “How am I going to tell my daughter that the town is shutting down? I finally understand what my parents went through in the 1990s — how scared they were.” Another person on the mic asked, “Are we going back to the ’90s?” The fear of returning to that dark period looms large over the community.

According to miners, the company employs approximately 3,500–3,700 people. Mining operations are divided into two main types: open-pit and underground. In recent years, the company has issued licenses to subcontractors — often cynically referred to as “cooperatives” — allowing them to dig anywhere in Chiatura and its surrounding areas. This has led to widespread excavation, stirring up dust and further exacerbating the town’s ecological crisis. In 2017, the government charged them 416 million Georgian lari (around $150 million) for damage to air and water.

Now the company has announced the shutdown of underground mining, which employs most workers — an estimated 2,500 people. Meanwhile, open-pit mining will continue, as it requires fewer workers and is less costly for the company. However, open-pit mining is far more damaging ecologically and devastating for the town.

The shift from underground to open-pit mining will leave thousands of workers in the most precarious of conditions, reliant on being called up for shifts from one day to the next. The limited number of positions in open-pit mining cannot offset the massive job losses caused by the closure of underground operations. Local elected officials have suggested that other jobs could replace those lost in the mine, but most people recognize this as unfeasible. The scale of the crisis is too vast, and the town’s economy has been too dependent on mining for such a transition to happen overnight.

The local church has also expressed solidarity with the people of Chiatura, particularly during what is known as “heavy fasting” — a period of strict fasting observed by Orthodox Christians before Easter. In its message, the church echoed the suggestion that new businesses need to be created and encouraged local entrepreneurs to step up. However, if the mine’s closure is inevitable, the effort to bring in new investment should have begun years ago. The sudden call for economic diversification, without any prior planning, offers little comfort to a community on the brink of collapse.

The company says underground mining is not profitable. There is no quality manganese left in these mines, and it wants to keep only the profitable part of its operations. In 2023, when miners were making every attempt to work with the mining company to improve labor conditions and limit environmental damage, the company mockingly told them, “The working class can have the underground mine. You all can run it.” Apparently, workers can now own the mine the company depleted, while it will keep the profitable part of the mining.

In 2016, the company started using even more exploitative labor practices, known as the “Wachtian” system — a term derived from the German “night watch.” Under this system, miners were forced to work twelve-hour shifts and the mine could stay open 24/7. Trucks were used to transport the mined minerals continuously, maximizing output.

This was a stark departure from practices during the Soviet era, when miners were not allowed to work underground for more than seven hours at a time, as it was deemed harmful to their health. These seven-hour shifts, combined with the use of railways for transportation, limited the speed at which manganese could be extracted. The Wachtian system, however, allowed the company to rapidly increase production.

The consequences of this system were severe and far-reaching. The health of the workers deteriorated, the environment suffered significant damage, and wages remained disproportionately low compared to productivity. The rapid depletion of manganese reserves became another hidden cost. These burdens were all externalized by the company and borne entirely by the miners and their families.

About a decade ago, a doctor diagnosed two sick miners with Parkinson’s disease, attributing their condition to mining practices. After speaking out, she was threatened by the company and has since refrained from making further diagnoses related to occupational diseases.

The mining company is also highly litigious. In Shuqruti, a nearby village where houses have collapsed due to mining activities, locals have faced immense financial and emotional burdens. To make matters worse, the company has sued many of these residents, freezing their assets and leaving them in legal limbo as they await trials that drag on for years.

Workers who dared to protest against the company’s practices were swiftly fired. Desperate for justice, residents of Shuqruti traveled to the capital, Tbilisi, and staged a hunger strike in front of the parliament, lasting for weeks in 2024. Yet their cries for help were met with indifference. Even protesters demonstrating against the government walked past them, as these working people’s plight did not align with the political narratives of the liberal opposition.

For years, hunger strikes and protests have continued in an attempt to draw government attention to their suffering. The company, meanwhile, has offered token compensation — amounts that barely cover a fraction of the damages inflicted. It also employs aggressive tactics such as lawsuits, freezing assets, and firing workers to intimidate and silence those who speak out.

During the Soviet era, the Chiatura-Zestaponi-Poti industrial circuit was established. Manganese was mined in Chiatura, sent to Zestaponi for refining, and then transported to Poti for export. Today parts of this circuit remain operational under private management. The Zestaponi factory is currently running, as the company has stockpiled enough manganese to last for months. There are even rumors that they may be importing manganese from Uganda to supplement their supply.

For years, miners and locals have tried to uncover the true production costs and revenues of Georgia Manganese, the company overseeing these operations. However, the company uses a complex network of subsidiaries to evade liability and obscure its financial details. While employers claim that the Chiatura operation is unprofitable, no one has a clear picture of the profitability of the company’s other operations. The lack of transparency makes it impossible to assess the full scope of its activities.

What is clear, however, is that the company treats Chiatura and its surrounding areas as personal property. The firm digs wherever it pleases, pollutes the environment, and extracts as much manganese as possible, disregarding both the long-term and more immediate consequences for the community. Now, after years of plundering the area, the company sends a perfunctory text message to tell people that their jobs are lost. This reckless decision threatens to devastate an entire town and destroy the livelihoods of thousands of families. At a recent rally, one woman voiced the frustration and despair felt by many: “This is my town. Why do I have to leave? The company needs to leave.”

Conscious of the way this company has been operating, on March 3 Chiatura miners issued a list of demands that stretched beyond the workplace itself. This was still before the company announced it was firing thousands of workers. Their demands are as follows:

Meeting with government; the investor (GM) must go, government must take responsibility for the mining operations; part of the profit from manganese mining be diverted to a fund for future generations of Chiaturians, the wealth from Manganese must be shared by everyone; free transport in the Chiatura municipality; the residents who have incurred damages from mining should be fully compensated, taking into the considerations of the interests of residents; the open-pit mining needs to be regulated to stop polluting and creating ecological damage, considering the interests of the residents.

Then, on March 7, the company announced a shutdown. Now the entire focus has shifted to the government to step in and address the crisis. Just a few days ago, a news article revealed that the Georgian Revenue Service had placed a lien on part of Georgia Manganese’s property because the company owes millions of dollars in unpaid taxes. It appears that, in addition to exploiting the town and its people, the company has also been neglecting its financial obligations to the Georgian government.

Yet despite the town’s dire circumstances, no one in power has reached out. This is particularly striking given Chiatura’s political leanings. During the recent elections — amid widespread allegations of fraud and calls for new elections by the opposition — Chiatura remained a stronghold for the ruling Georgian Dream party, with the government enjoying 65 percent support here. Even when the mine was temporarily shut down just five days after the elections, the residents did not join calls to oust the government. They have been loyal voters, standing by Georgian Dream even as the neoliberal opposition has tried to overturn the election.

Now, facing total collapse, the people of Chiatura continue to approach the government with constructive appeals, despite the sadness and offense they feel at being ignored during the town’s biggest crisis in thirty years. Their loyalty and patience are being tested as they wait for a response that has yet to come.

Georgian Dream is often cast as an “anti-Western” and radical force. In reality, it is strongly ideologically constrained by its commitment to neoliberal policies. For years, it has boasted about Georgia’s high rankings in indexes of “economic freedom” and ease of doing business, tied to principles like deregulation and privatization. These policies, enforced by institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, discourage actions like nationalization — when they are in the interest of workers — as they could harm the country’s rankings and “investor confidence,” jeopardizing the sovereignty of the market.

However, this ideological rigidity is selective. In Ukraine, the IMF itself pushed for the nationalization of PrivatBank, which was owned by Ihor Kolomoisky, the same oligarch linked to Georgia Manganese, which is under Georgian American Alloys, a company headquartered in the United States. This move was motivated by a desire not to serve the people but to tilt the balance in favor of pro-Western capital. Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian-Israeli-Cypriot businessman, had initially backed Volodymyr Zelensky but later fell out of favor, leading to his arrest on charges of fraud and corruption. This demonstrates that nationalization is not off the table when it aligns with geopolitical goals or benefits Western interests.

Yet in Georgia, citizens are told that demanding the nationalization of Chiatura’s mines — a move that would benefit the people and possibly save their town — is against the “orthodox norms” of investment and could endanger foreign direct investment (FDI). This double standard exposes the hypocrisy of neoliberal policies: nationalization is embraced when it serves powerful interests but dismissed as radical when it could empower ordinary citizens. While foreign investors and their profits are protected, the people of Chiatura are left to fend for themselves.

Faced with economic catastrophe, the community has rallied together impressively in shows of solidarity. Townspeople are donating big bags of potatoes and other foodstuffs, local restaurants are providing meals, and others are contributing money to help those in need. Meanwhile, miners are chasing down cars suspected of secretly transporting materials out of Chiatura for the company, desperate to hold on to whatever resources remain.

Even before this crisis, 12,000 people in Chiatura were already relying on welfare. Now the situation has grown even more dire. The company has failed to pay February’s salaries to workers and has not provided any compensation for the mass layoffs. Families are drowning in debt, with bank loans accumulating interest and fees daily. To make matters worse, Georgia has no unemployment insurance system, leaving those who have lost their jobs with no safety net.

The lack of concern for the miners from the political opposition, which has been staging protests in the capital for over a hundred days, speaks volumes about its own ideological constraints. While opposition leaders position themselves as pro-Western liberals, their commitment to neoliberal principles often overshadows any genuine solidarity with workers or collective struggles. Neoliberalism, by its very logic, casts workers’ issues and collective solutions such as unions or government intervention as either politically irrelevant or something to vehemently oppose. This ideological framework prioritizes the sovereignty of the market above all else.

This contradiction was starkly evident when the opposition co-opted the concept of a “strike” for their own purposes. During their protests, pro-opposition businesses staged a symbolic shutdown called a “general strike,” in a move designed to appeal to Western politicians and garner international attention. Yet from their perspective, industrial workers and unions appear as “relics from the Soviet era,” indeed in a town that voted overwhelmingly for the ruling party.

If the opposition see neoliberalism and closer ties to the European Union as a path to advancing Western civilization, the government camp wants to welcome all capital. If anything, it sees more potential of FDI coming from the “East.” In this regard, the government is deeply invested in maintaining their reputation as business-friendly, despite being rhetorically limited by their emphasis on national sovereignty and Georgian traditional culture. Chiatura has become a testing ground: how can the government maintain its popular base — drawn to ideas of sovereignty and caring for Georgia — while remaining loyal to foreign capital and expecting an entire town’s population to accept, like divine providence, the cruel vicissitudes of the market?

The response by people in Chiatura shows that this is still, in part, a resilient society in which the culture of solidarity can still make itself felt. Evidently not all post-Soviet citizens are won to the anti-communist gospel of blind faith in the market, and not all Georgian politics is a showdown between pro-Russian or pro-European oligarchs. Their reaction expresses a solidarity built on decades of labor in often harsh conditions, hacking at the hard ground to produce wealth for others but also to make life possible for the future generations. With that future torn away, that spirit will be harder to keep alive. The people of Chiatura need the government to intervene, and soon.