Dockworkers and their union organisations

4.2.2 RPD - Russian Trade Union of Dockers

The situation at Leningrad commercial seaport was also of wide concern for the local port workers. Dockers at the port felt insecure about their future fate; they therefore demanded that more guarantees should be included in the sectoral tariff agreement. In order to provide a basis for their participation in the negotiation of the collective agreement, a dockers’ group was formed at the seaport. The group for a certain time existed as a section within the official trade union, while leaders of the old, official trade union tried to manipulate the influence of dockers. In addition, a similar situation also arose in other seaports. In several seaports, the dockers had established independent organisations but never joined FNPR as its member organisations.

To set up a coordinated perspective for dockers’ self-organisation, these new organisations called a congress to decide if the new organisation should stay as an inner but separated group of the official trade union or establish a new trade union. On June 26 1992, union organisations of dockers from the main Russian ports (St Petersburg, Murmansk, Tuapse, Magadan, Novorossiiskii and Vladivostok ports) held the congress and established the dockers’ union. The delegates of each region together composed the Executive Committee. Vladimir Vasil’ev, a docker from the Seaport of St Petersburg, was elected as the trade union president. The aims and tasks of the new organisation were to protect the social and economic interests of dockers, workers from other port professions and also port clerical workers. Over this period, the basic problems also included massive-scale redundancy, which was directly affected by the fall of the performance of the Russian ports and fleet; and the unlawful behaviour of stevedore companies. As a strong and active trade union organisation in Russia, RPD has, since its formation, always been on the side of the so-called free trade unions within the Russian trade union movement. The union is widely seen as one of the most active free / alternative trade union organisations. Among RPD’s primary organisations at Russian seaports, the dockers and their organisations at the St Petersburg Seaport have shown their considerable strength in the formation of local labour relations.
Membership and union structure

In general, the aim of RPD is to protect dockers’ interests, and its membership is based on the profession of dockers. Nevertheless, despite the earlier motive for the formation of the union and its chosen name, the union nowadays also allows the recruitment of port workers of other professions, which includes tally-officers (accounting of cargos) and facility service workers. The total union membership in 2001 was 8,372, of which 8,172 were male members, only 200 were female. According to a different source, this represents 80% of all dockers in Russia, and about 26% of the whole port workforce.¹⁰¹ The membership, however, is not distributed evenly across all Russian seaports, but is mostly concentrated at the main Russian seaports. And even the state of the membership distribution at these main seaports differs. In the Seaport of St Petersburg, for example, almost 90% of dockers are members of RPD, but almost none from the nearby timber seaport where the total labour force is relatively low. Overall, RPD does represent dockers at most big Russian seaports.

Generally, the union structure has been clearly defined in the constitution. The structure of the union is simple: Congress, Council, Executive Committee, primary port organisation at three levels. There are in total 27 primary (port) organisations: 17 in the far-east region (including Magadan and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskii), 2 in south Russia, 5 in north Russia, 4 in northwest Russia (St Petersburg, Vyborg, Vysotsk, Kaliningrad). In addition, the local organisations in the far-east region have established a special regional branch of RPD – Far-east Regional Branch of RPD (DVRO RPD).

Chairpersons of all port organisations together with the RPD president and his four deputy presidents comprise the council of RPD. Until recently the union council had 32 members, and each member of the council has one vote. According to the RPD Charter, a meeting of the council requires three-quarters of the total number to be present. The union structure does not really give effective leadership to the national headquarters. The genuine authority of the trade union organisation is separate and is held in the hands of each port committee. Most of the time, it is the port organisations which decide their main activities. The union’s national ‘headquarters’ is located in Moscow with a weak and symbolic status. Since the union was formed, there has been little change within the central leadership circle. The first president, Vladimir Vasil’ev and his deputy Alexander Shepel’ kept these posts until 1998. Vladimir Vasil’ev was a senior docker, who had worked at the Leningrad Commercial Seaport since 1971. At the 1991 meeting of the port dockers, a new union organisation was formed at the port, and he was firstly elected as the chair of the union organisation. In 1992, at the founding congress of the Russian Trade Union of Dockers he was elected as the first president of the new organisation. The current RPD president, Alexander Shepel’, was a docker from Magadan Sea Port. He joined the dockers’ group of the Magadan port in 1978 and retired in November 1996. He had started to work for the official trade union in 1986, until the new trade union was formed. In 1996, at the third congress of the Russian Trade Union of Dockers, he was elected as the deputy president of RPD. He became the president of RPD when Vasil’ev left the post. The president of the union is normally in charge of the external relations with other labour or social organisations as well as the exchange of information with international trade union organisations. The leadership of RPD also actively participated in establishing an alternative confederation of non-FNPR trade unions. In April 1995, the Confederation of Labour of Russia (KTR) was formed. RPD has been one of the most active member organisations within the KTR circle. In 1996, Alexander Shepel’ was also elected as the president of KTR.

According to the principles of the RPD structure, initiatives proposed by the council depend on their local organisations to decide how they would really carry out the resolution. With its rather symbolic status, neither the national council of the union nor the union headquarters could provide effective coordinative roles for the issues or actions involved. At each port, the port union organisation makes its own decision about strikes or collective actions. The coordinated actions of RPD organisations have been about the union’s status and about employment guarantees at Russian seaports. To make the RPD’s voice heard, the council normally demands that their port organisations should have a warning protest or short work stoppage.

The first joint action of RPD local organisations took place in 1996. At the third union congress, held on February 22-23 1996 in St Petersburg, the union delegates discussed the new tendency of anti-union struggle appearing in the seaport sector, in which the formation of a Vessel Owners’ Union had shown their hostile attitude towards the dockers’ organisation. Another main appeal adopted on the congress was to the federal government, in which the union raised its concern on the current policy of the government not supporting the domestic sector or the country’s products. RPD also blamed the government for not making state investment into the infrastructure of Russian ports. After the congress, the first joint industrial action of RPD took place on April 9 1996. Across the Russian seaports such as Petropavlovsk-Kamchatka, Vladivostok, Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, St Petersburg, Novorossiisk and some others, members of RPD held a protest in order to secure the future of their jobs. About 5,000 port workers participated in this one-hour warning strike action.¹⁰²

In the same year there was another coordinated activity held to prevent the ‘dumping of the work force’. The coordination was better developed in the North-West region. On September 10-12 1996, a Convention of dockers’ unions across the Baltic region was held. Representatives from Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania attended the Convention. The convention raised several appeals, which included: against the imposition of seafarers’ duties onto dockers’ work; against the employment of dockers on vessels sailing under flags of convenience. The participating parties passed a resolution on a joint effort to press their demands on the relevant authorities.

On October 2-3 1996, a special council meeting of RPD was held in St Petersburg. At the meeting, delegates discussed the employment state of Russian seaports. The meeting passed a resolution warning that if the Russian government did not change its policy over the future prospects of seaports across Russian territory, the dockers would call an all-Russian strike. A similar united action was held in September 1999. The action was conducted through a three-minute protest programme without a real work stoppage. And then in December 2004, the Far Eastern, Murmansk, Kaliningrad and St Petersburg dockers launched an initiative under the slogans ‘Russian cargoes – only through Russian ports’ and ‘Taxes on transhipment of Russian cargoes to the federal and local budgets’, claiming that dumping rates for the railways and loading at foreign ports were taking trade away from Russian ports.

One collective campaign which involved all local organisations was the picket and warning strike against the new version of the Labour Code in 2001. In April 2001, the union joined the action against the government draft of the new Labour Code. In November in Moscow a meeting organised by the dockers, Sotsprof and other non-FNPR trade unions stood outside the building of the State Duma. Standing together with other non-FNPR trade unions, RPD showed their full disagreement with the original draft Labour Code, which had been offered for consideration by the State Duma, which considerably limited the rights of working people and trade unions. The leaders of RPD expressed their concern that the employer becomes the only ruler of people’s destinies. The dockers were especially indignant because the draft new Labour Code, in their opinion, brings to naught the role of trade unions in distributing the enterprises’ profits and in the social protection of working people. The Council of RPD also passed a resolution in support of the campaign for Oleg Shein’s version of the Labour Code. One of the St Petersburg activists, Konstantin Fedotov, was a co-writer of an alternative version of the draft Labour Code. After the end of the Russian State Duma’s voting, the campaign came to an end.

The case of the Kaliningrad union committee indicated that even on a broader ground we find that the fate of the port committees has been varied. This perception was not uncommon as even activists of the port organisations concluded that ‘RPD is just a flag’ (YuryR, April 13, 2005). The real strength relies on the union committees. In concrete terms, the Russian Trade Union of Dockers has relied on its local port organisations to act on their own, and the local port organisations, at least the one in this case study, have relied on the union committees of each company. The dispute at the Kaliningrad seaport clearly showed that the advantages of the dockers’ occupation does not necessarily guarantee the position of an ‘alternative’ union organisation at the workplace, as the RPD organisations had to face their own fates with their local companies.¹⁰³ This factor has defined the character of port organisations as individual organisations on their own but not their growth together with RPD.

4.2.3 Relations between RPD and PRVT

Nowadays, the relationship between RPD and PRVT seems to have become more constructive than a mere absence of mutual interaction. Although the two organisations still keep a certain distance from each other, more contact and common actions have also been conducted. At the national level, in May 2003, PRVT invited all trade unions from the river and sea transport industries to attend a Round Table meeting. The central topic was how the union can be associated or united as a stronger force in the circumstances of the new Labour Code. On December 14th 2004 PRVT and RPD together raised an all-Russia protest with the common slogan of ‘Russian freights – through Russian Ports!’

The situation at enterprise level might differ, but there have been no real fights between the two trade unions. In the stevedore companies of St Petersburg Seaport, PRVT union committee, though not as militant as the RPD ones, chose to cooperate with the RPD union committee. For example, since the RPD union committee had weaker representation status, during the period of the labour dispute in PKT in 2004 the PRVT union committee signed their common demand and support for the RPD union committee’s proposal.¹⁰⁴ The relationship was not always smooth though. The PRVT leaders are still generally prone to the employer’s position. To take one example, the president of the PRVT territorial organisation refused to join the action of the RPD port organisation at the St Petersburg Seaport, and his suggestion on the regulation of ‘uchet mneniya profsoyuza’ (taking account of union opinion), which replaced the requirement to secure the union’s permission in the new Labour Code, was closer to the port administration’s argument but the opposite of that of local RPD activists’. Both the administration and the PRVT president consider ‘uchet mneniya profsoyuza’ has guaranteed the status of the trade union in regulating the workplace labour relations so that the struggle of RPD for the union’s concrete rights to be written into collective agreement did not get much sympathy.