On 6 August, a total of 4,800 employees of the Georgian Railway announced to go on strike on 10 August if their salaries are not to be increased by 50 percent, reported agenda.ge.

Georgian Railway has responded to these demands, calling them “unrealistic, a populist issue.”  The Georgian Railway announced that it will increase the salaries of workers whose monthly salary does not exceed over 1,500 GEL on 1 March 2020 by 10 percent. They also stated that it is not true that some 4,800 employees are preparing to go on strike as the railway union includes only 400 members “and it does not have the legitimacy to speak on behalf of the full staff and, moreover, to announce going on strike due to unfulfilled demands.”

Ilia Lezhava, the deputy chairman of the railway union, said that the main problem is that since 2012, employees whose wages are under 1,000 GEL have not received a pay raise. He said that some people get only 200-300 GEL while performing “quite difficult jobs”. He added that if the administration of the railway does not agree to hold negotiations with the employees, they would go on strike.

On 7 August, more than 60 workers, who were building a railway tunnel between Eastern and Western Georgia, decided to quit their jobs after a failure to achieve their demands from the employer, as reported by the Caucasian Knot.

Two days earlier, workers in the Georgian village of Kvishkheti threatened to block the construction, if the contractor company did not provide them with safe working conditions and did not raise wages. 20 of them quit their jobs after fruitless negotiations with the contractor. About 40 workers continued their strike in the morning; they still demanded to increase their wages up to 30 laris (about USD 10.3), and also to preserve the additional pay of 140 laris (about USD 48.2) after 26 days of work.