This deal was railroaded through . At an assembly called by one of the two telephone unions, all dissident opinion was suppressed . Some workers declared their disgust with this and planned their own pickets to denounce the sellout . . But the workers anger will not soon go away . Millions of Russian workers are owed billions of rubles in back wages .
Workers often go without pay for months on end .
The Russian coal miners have had enough . In several regions during July, they struck en masse, blocked railroad tracks, and engaged in protests . Miners in the island of Sakhalin in the Russian Far East have blocked trains carrying fuel to power stations, resulting in major power blackouts . . These protests are part of an ongoing movement . Previously, for two weeks in May, miners throughout Russia had also blocked parts of the Trans- Siberian railroad, forcing trains to make huge detours .