The port organisation of RPD at St Petersburg Seaport

4.3.2 Structure, member organisations and organisational work

The membership of the port organisation was about 2,500 in 2003. All members are required to contribute 2% of their salaries as union dues every month.

Since 1998, the port organisation has been composed of five permanent member organisations. All these five union committees are from the main stevedore companies of the seaport, and all have their own committee offices at the port territory of the companies. These primary organisations cover the workforce of the main operating stevedore companies at the port, they include:

• 
  Trade union committee of PerStiKo
  

This is the biggest primary organisation of the port organisation.

• 
  Trade union committee of VSK
  

• 
  Trade union committee of ChSK
  

• 
  Trade union committee of PKT company (since 1998)
  

• 
  Trade union committee of Neva-Metall company
  

There was once a trade union organisation at the Baltic Bulk-Carrier Terminal (BBT), then initiators joined the Port Committee but soon came under pressure and its formation was not successful. The BBT union committee, which was initiated officially, had nearly vanished. The initiation and the first step had occurred, but development of the union organisation in these two companies seemed to have a long way to go.¹⁰⁹ It is very impressive that local RPD activists emphasised that the union activists did put an effort into basic communication with their members. The union activists have tried to put more effort into representation at the most primary level.

‘Here, for example, the trade union group in every brigade, every collective, has its deputy. The trade union groups constitute the shop committees, so our trade union works constantly with the collective. The task is to work out primary groups established among each profession of workers. Almost 100% of docker-machine operators have their own union groups; the percentage is about 90 % among mechanics or tally-officers. Moreover, the organiser of each union group should be re-elected not less than once a year, they can also be replaced at any time’ (Konstantin Fedotov, Head of Consulting-Legal Department RPD, March 29, 2002).

Each union group also has a representative as a member of the shop committee, but the shop committee is designed as a permanent organ, with no election and no fixed structure. The chair of the shop committee is elected at the conference and the conference should be held not less than once every two years. Konstantin Fedotov asserted that the structure of the local organisations is probably more complicated than that of other Russian trade unions, but it is because in this way they can avoid the problem of FNPR union organisations. According to the design, there will be no possibility of the union not functioning. Such a simple rule represents the efforts of trade union activists on organisational tasks. On most occasions, it was the participation of the union group among the dockers’ brigades which determined the capacity of the port organisation. The local RPD organisations rely on the participation of union groups among brigades of dockers, mechanics and tally-officers. These union groups operate individually, embedded in the brigade meeting at their work territory. All the primitive demands or requests are expected to be discussed firstly at the brigade or group meetings; and the union group is designed to ensure that an inactive organiser can be replaced at any time. Through their participation, the composition of the shop committee should be more stable. The chairpersons of several shop committees form the trade union committee.

Apart from the executive organs like the union committee and the port committee, the local activists also made efforts to ensure that the ‘conferences’ were held regularly in the practice of their primary organisations at the port. To compare the dockers’ conference with the case study finding in the railway workers chapter, the local RPD activists have been much more confident. According to one of the activists,

‘I can say that with such a design, we had never failed in conducting conferences. Because the design of our organisational structure makes the activities rely not simply on the will of one single person, but on several equally capable activists…. The union activities indeed need to look at the person’s will, but the point is you should make it impossible to be affected by one single person’ (Fedotov, March 29, 2002).

In the interviews, leaders or activists of the four main companies were all quite confident at the attendance of their members at the conference. It seems that brigade meetings at each stevedore company indeed provide the fundamental dynamics for the performance of superior organisations; as the organisers indeed relayed their messages during negotiations or labour disputes within their companies. The design and the practice of the structural establishment of RPD primary organisations at the port seem to have reached an efficient balance. Moreover, the design also allows those activists in brigades or shop committee not necessarily to look upon the chairperson of the union committee but to carry out more delicate mobilisation beyond the chairperson of the union committee. For example, by referring to the way in which solidarity was created during the pre-strike period, one brigade leader (also an active union activist) described the first response to the action in the dispute over the scale of wage indexation in late 2004. To present their own opinions, a united meeting was called by 198, 192, 188 and 187 brigades (as he explained these four brigades traditionally belong to one collective, which is PPK-3) from the company ‘First Container Terminal’ In the meeting, members discussed the demands they would like to put into the collective agreement, or discussed the draft presented by their representatives in the working group. Similar brigade meetings were also held in other stevedore companies more or less at the same time. A brigade leader is expected to understand the position on union policy then explain it to members as a union activist. Certainly, not all of them were so active, as one activist expressed it ‘only a few of us did it, but this is still enough, they just need a bit of a push’. These messages or demands are supposed to be presented at the conference of the trade union committee. Ideally, resolutions of both the brigade meetings and the union conferences corresponded, which was exactly to show their united will to take collective action by members of these four organisations, though it depended on the brigade leader and union activists. Some were very active, most of them rather focused on the difficulties of work performance. Nonetheless, as in the cases of BBT and ‘Timber Terminal’ mentioned earlier, such organisational strength still differs according to the union presence in different companies of the port.

Certainly, chairperson of union committee is to provide major representation of the primary organisation. Unlike the situation of RPLBZh, here at the seaport all trade union committees have their own offices and facilities in their own territory, though only the president of the port committee is in charge of external contacts. Normally, the chairpersons of union committees work on their own, looking after material support for members and checking practical conditions guaranteed in the collective agreement, and they derive their authority from their status over their ability in dealing with the management. The preparation and disputes over collective agreement issues, however, pull them into a closer position. Unlike that of the port committee, their offices are located inside the port area. Their main duty within the design of the structure of the dockers’ port organisation is to overview the development of working conditions, as well as to produce assessments of the implementation of the collective agreement in their own companies. They respond to the workers’ complaints, local RPD union activists constantly asked their management to provide dockers with proper and necessary technical provision, such as special masks or clothing while dealing with chemical materials, for their work. When there is a labour dispute occurring at the workplace, the chairperson of the union committee has the duty to provide support in the first place. In practice, these leaders usually take such disputes to the state inspector, as the first option, to investigate or to resolve the cases. Unlike the case study finding of RPLBZh activists in the previous chapters, the chairperson of RPD union committees did not get involved in court action that much. According to one of the union leaders, relying on court cases, it would not be easy to get a better solution than relying on direct negotiation with the administration (another characteristic different from the way the railway workers operate). The genuine consideration related to two parts: if the disputes may occur while the collective agreement is activated, it should be treated on such a basis as a priority; personal dispute cases at the seaport mostly relate to the violation of the workload or inefficient equipment at the workplace. For those court cases, the chairperson and the union committee is responsible for supporting / representing the individual member (but more often the brigade) to defend the right of the workers involved in the court. When asked what they thought about the importance of taking the dispute to the court, a chairperson of a union committee said:

‘To bring the case to the court we have to bear the prejudice of judges at the local level and the nonsensical ignorance of the employer in the court case. It normally takes a long time to go through the whole process, but trade union activity can not wait until the decision’ (Vladimir Petrov, chairperson of union committee PerStiKo, November 25, 2003).

All in all, such a dimension of the union’s daily activities indicates certain strength of the trade union committee in its interaction with the administration.

To compare the conditions for RPD union activists with RPLBZh activists on the October Railway over the past decade of union activities, we rarely can find cases raised by the port administration against individual dockers. Their situation differs from most alternative trade unions in Russia, where the union organisations are normally suppressed by the employers. Certainly, there has been pressure of the administration on union activists and members at St Petersburg Seaport, but the general situation has been much less than that of other ‘independent’ trade unions. Unlike the situation of the railway workers’ organisations, cases of individual victimization of trade union activists or members have been rare. However, on May 5, 2000, when the labour dispute over the index of wages and the maintenance of the terms of collective bargaining occurred, negotiations between the union and the administration took place to settle the dispute. The chairperson of the trade union committee of the Second Stevedore Company was searched on suspicion of holding drugs. After the search he and his wife were arrested. The port committee immediately stood up and defended the union leader. The union believed that this was a deliberate act trying to put extra pressure on the negotiation. Although leaders of PRVT port organisation never agreed to take part in actions held by RPD union organisations, the old trade union PRVT did not raise aggressive acts to disturb or attack the RPD organisations. Whether at the national or local level, the PRVT unions even tried to reach a common interest between the two trade unions. With the RPD organisations’ strength, most labour dispute cases were dealt with directly between the union organisation and the management rather than being raised in court to be resolved by legal enforcement. Therefore, RPD union organisations are quite confident that taking disputes through court procedure is not a better solution.

Nevertheless, the condition of less pressure from the administration was not experienced evenly by dockers of all the port companies, particularly those with more marginal positions. The fact that the union committee of Neva-Metall once had difficulty to move into the union office and the failure to establish a union organisation at BBT showed that where there is weak representation of RPD membership, the primary organisation faces the pressure on its own. They have not really been privileged by the strength of the union organisation. It is critical to note that the limit of the port committee’s capacity has not changed much within the current framework.

RPD union organisation was firstly established in 1998, Neva-Metall has a different situation. People suggested that this was because their administration was more experienced. In other companies dockers confronted their administration in 1998, when the administration was not that experienced. Workers were freer. Before the establishment of the new union organisation, workers all stayed with the old PRVT organisation. The union section of RPD was established after almost all the promised conditions were ruined after the 1998 crisis. Workers sought for RPD to provide basic protection of their working conditions, so that a union organisation was established. The union committee, however, did not act as those of the other four companies, and was seen as a weak part of the port organisation. Interestingly, an active member, on the contrary, insisted that was actually their union committee has a smarter way to negotiate with their employers so that they did not have to take it to the confrontational stage. By the end of 2005, the primary organisation embraced 100 members out of a total of 400 workers in the company and was still struggling to receive a union office until mid-2004. One of the active members described the relations between its union committee and the port committee as remote. ‘They worked on their own, and we worked on our own, I did not seek help from the port committee. We do not need to apply the joint draft of the collective agreement’ (EdwardM, docker of Neva-Metall, August 04, 2005). And later on, when I had a chance to gather members of the union committee to discuss the situation of the conflict at the port and also to make a comparison with their own union organisation, they started to argue who was rather correct on the estimation of the port committee’s strategy.

‘We have members with a passive attitude, a weak leader, strong union committee, and a relatively progressive employer. We prefer to work on our own. The port committee was not really helpful. …I rarely read the newspaper. ’ (Conversation with the members of Union Committee Neva-Metall, August 04, 2005)

It is important to note that the leadership of the five trade union committees are not fully indifferent. More concretely to say, in the case of Neva-Metall or ‘BBT’, or even PKT the conditions derive less benefit from being member organisations, since their companies have different ownership from the traditional stevedore companies. The active port committee played a limited role in the formation or support of other union organisations. Therefore, in these two companies, it was only the chairperson of the union committee or a single activist who kept the primary union organisation running under the port organisation of RPD.

Port committee

My talk with the leader of the port committee was combined with respect and frustration. The reason for this partly derived from the words and the fact that their explanations made me not sure which part presented more facts in the field of the labour relations of the seaport. The leader had repeated many times that for them the organisational work more likely depended on finding and recruiting activists to carry out organisational tasks. As he pointed out:

‘So the first lesson is – the understanding of people. But only understanding is not enough; it is necessary to have the will and the knowledge that there is no ‘kind uncle’ who will come and do everything for us. After the organisation has been established, when people have been found who understand that it is necessary to change things for the better, then you have to start with small things, with recruiting people for the organisation. The main direction is workers of the main profession. So that even if it does not have a majority, the new union organisation will still be able to achieve many things’ (Moiseenko, 2004).¹¹⁰

In a radio interview in 2005, Moiseenko responded to the suggestion that the trade union system needed to be changed by replying,

‘that is not the issue, because from the point of view of what needs to be changed, we need simply to switch on the consciousness that the trade union is us - people. People fill up the trade union, are members of the trade union. People determine the goals and tasks. To achieve these goals and tasks, again, everything depends on people, on the community spirit of people, on their commitment…. If people dispersed, the trade union would be nothing. To date, unfortunately, we can be confident, particularly over the last six years, that without a collective, without people, you will do nothing. You will resolve nothing with administrative resources. To date, if we had used only the administrative resources of a trade union with ten people on the port committee, that is what I would say. It would have been a soap bubble, a return to the old trade union’ (Moiseenko, 2005).¹¹¹

The material resources of the port committee also reflect the strength of the organisation. Apart from the offices of the union committees, the dockers’ organisation has a separate office for the port organisation (port committee). The office of the Port committee is located in one of the buildings of the port authority, out of the port territory, together with two other departments of the port establishments: Department of Protection of Labour and Department of the Technical Director. There is a strict control at reception in the modern building. (To some extent, the whole office environment is even better than that inside the palace of the FNPR trade unions in SPb and Leningrad region.) To compare the port committee’s resources with the office of local RPLBZh organisations, the dockers’ port organisation owns all kinds of communication and office equipment not only from the budget of the union due but mostly provided by the administration of the port companies. The president even owns a laptop. (Surprisingly, there is even a portable storage card reader.) The office is cosy without visible slogans or posters for the union’s struggle (no ‘militant-struggle spirit’ images) but decorated with paintings of Peter the Great. For the function of the port committee body, there are three divisions of the union activities including the president and deputy president, the accounting officers, and economical and legal consultation centres. (Unlike the railway workers where the chairperson has to carry all these functions)

Figure 4.3: A solidarity message posted on the port committee’s bulletin board

Data source: Doker, No. 129, 15 November 2003, p.2. The title of the resolution: On Solidarity with the docker-mechanics of PerStiKo. Resolution of the conference of the local primary organisation of the Russian Trade Union of Dockers of the ‘First Container Terminal¹¹²

The connection between the members and the union organisation has been quite positive. It seems that such making of solidarity has been not so much for individual union struggle as to shape the coordinating capacity of the port committee. When asked about the function and the strength of the port committee, people gave a high evaluation. All these practices have guaranteed the strength and the authority of the port committee. As most activists at the port believe, their members are active enough while they were preparing to put pressure on their administrations. There has been little worry about how to persuade members to participate in industrial action. (Nevertheless, they also know that it is unlikely that they will be able to mobilise members to participate in massive protests.) He further also mentioned the possible direction for the dockers’ union to unite (form a block group) with other independent unions.

The president of the port committee even defined those workers who are not members of the trade union as strike-breakers. As he said such,

‘For us it is completely incomprehensible. Well, none of them would refuse the bonus, which is paid according to the collective agreement, which was adopted thanks to the dockers’ union. These are real strike-breakers. Unfortunately, our people will not turn their backs on them, because so much vodka has been drunk, their families are friends, they pick mushrooms together. Then it will somehow be forgotten that those standing apart benefit from something which they themselves did not strive for’ (Group interview, February 18, 2004) In addition, all the presidents of the port committee since 1991 have been from the First Stevedore Company.
Preparation for the collective agreement

Since RPD was established, the relations between workers and the seaport administration or employers have been quite regularly organised, and the main battles have been around the content of the collective agreement. We may say that the dockers’ organisations at the Seaport of St Petersburg firstly benefited from the design attached to the organisation of work – the complex brigade or group work. We can also see that the preparation of the collective agreement on the dockers’ side benefits from the relatively efficiency of its organisational structure. The more important matter is the leaders and the activists did pay much attention to the preparatory work of collective bargaining. Outside the structure, there is another panel, the workers’ representative for the collective agreement working panel, which also represents the rank-and-file members. Before forming an official panel to work on the collective agreement, they normally set up a tariff commission to collect and listen to demands or suggestions from their members. It usually takes up to one year to prepare for it. And there are then conferences held to collect members’ general demands. The drafts and progress of both those demands and the preparation work for collective bargaining have normally been published in the port organisation’s newspaper (Doker – za rabochee delo). Each member would receive the full list of various documents – such as proposals, compromise articles – related to their collective bargaining via the circulation of the union’s bulletin. Each member should also receive the whole copy of the agreement once the collective agreement has been authorised. The whole practice presents union members and union activists with intensive contact, so that together also guarantees the dynamics of the union organisation.

Since the first collective agreement signed in 1993, dockers of St Petersburg Seaport have been concerned with how to improve the agreement and how to develop more efficient bargaining skills. The matter for the RPD port organisation was such a development has not been easy because they need to represent the concern of ordinary members. For example, since 1996, there have been more than one hundred new articles proposed for new collective agreements. The basic categories and the contents of the collective agreement are:

• 
  The organisation of production
  
• 
  Working time
  
• 
  Protection of labour
  
• 
  Remuneration of labour
  
• 
  Employment
  
• 
  Social guarantees and benefits
  
• 
  Workers’ right of trade union activity
  

To work out all these requirements, the members of the working team have to look through about 30 documents. Members of the collective bargaining commission from the union’s side have the right to take temporary leave on full pay. When they enter into the negotiation period, according to experience, the two parties – administration and workers - normally meet twice a week (the working group meets for about two hours each time). Moreover, in 2003, the port committee has started to provide a united draft for the trade union committee of each stevedore company to develop its own agreement with the management of the company. Basically all individual agreements would be able to be presented under the common draft. Such attempts, however, did not meet what the leaders expected over the process of 2003-2005. The trade union committees of PKT and Neva-Metall, for both the conditions and equipment and the ownership of these two companies are different from the First, the Second and the Fourth Stevedore Companies, reached their own agreements with their employers. Generally, the dockers’ organisations recognise the necessity of uniting under the representation of the port committee. The trade union committees also recognise the meaning of showing the solidarity message to each other. The coordinating ability of the port committee showed solidarity in the necessity of improving working conditions and the necessity for united actions. The port committee agreed that at the port there should be a single draft of the collective agreement. As an ideal development for the next step, the port committee would be able to require the administrations of the Seaport of St Petersburg to sign a joint collective agreement covering all workers in the port. Nevertheless, in practice, such an agreement would exclude workers belonging to those companies which are not included in the whole managerial structure. More importantly, one of the characteristics of the port committee and their union committees is that the activists are not restrained from mobilising members to form a strong voice in order to put pressure on the administration. There were even joint conferences held in order to unite and strengthen the voice of the workers of the involved companies. A similar character can be found more specifically in their own practice of employing the term ‘social partnership’ for their collective bargaining.

The port committee provided the most critical role in coordinating the preparatory work for collective bargaining. The main coordination functions of the port committee have been based on sharing their experiences and skills of how to deal with employers during the process. Here the port committee office provides delegates of different trade union organisations with a ‘space’ to work on it. And the port committee has clearly built its role on this function: to be present and support their delegates in their negotiations with companies operating at the port, as well as to make these negotiations based on a unified, common draft. According to the acquired authority of both trade union committees and the port organisation, these delegates have been able to load off their work duties and work on the average wage while preparing for the collective agreement bargaining. So that for the preparation work delegates can be fully incorporated as a working group. The port committee owns its office, its staff, and its own facilities. All union activists have access to the equipment of the port committee and its services. (Although each trade union committee also has basic communications equipment.)

However, we would need to distinguish the character of the solidarity action of dockers at the St Petersburg seaport. Sometimes, there was doubt from rank-and-file dockers too. For example, a docker-machine operator from the Second Stevedoring Company complained about the poor solidarity when he and his colleagues first went on warning action during the conflict between dockers and the administration, though the chairperson of the union committee of PerStiKo promised to carry out all possible support to the acting collective,

‘In actual fact we received only ‘‘choke’’ (polki v koleca). And the employers even sensed our weak solidarity; they simply transferred the cargo handling capacity to the company PerStiKo. Those cargoes were even soon disembarked. And where is the solidarity yet?’ (Zakharov, 2004, Doker, No. 135, p.3)

From the participation in the dockers’ organisational work and strike action, we can note that the strongest solidarity network is based on the traditional network of companies, and that was deliberately conducted by the port committee. More details will be given when we move to the conflicts in 2004 and 2005 in the next chapter.

4.3.3 External relations

Apart from the coordination role for internal work, another designed work for the port committee is to handle their external relations. Their regular cooperation with external organisations includes their work with the legal consultation centre Egida, previously operated as the St Petersburg branch of the AFL-CIO sponsored Solidarnost’, and also the Fund of Workers’ Academy, organised by the local left-wing scholar and political activist, Professor Popov. In addition, contacts with external trade union organisations are required to go through the Port committee.

The port committee’s contact with Egida has been merely for the practical resources. Apart from attendance at the round table meetings of Egida to share the experience of collective bargaining in the port, the dockers’ leaders have had little interest in building external contacts with other local trade unions. The contact with the legal centre, which is basically between the chief of the port committee’s legal consultant section and the director of Egida, has given the union access to labour law experts. As for the internal organisational work, the port committee used to invite the local legal consultation centre Egida, to conduct local seminars for their members to learn the new Russian Labour Code.

The cooperation with the Fund of Workers’ Academy firstly comes from several leaders’ ideological connection with the ‘Workers’ Academy’. Secondly, it is useful for their activists to learn the skills and the practice of collective bargaining offered by experts of the Workers’ Academy. Such cooperation is based more on practical needs than any intention to create a solidarity network. Since the dockers’ unions do not have their own newspaper or bulletin, the connection with the Workers’ Academy gives them access to the port committee’s newspaper ‘Doker’ for publication. The newspaper, just like that of the local railway workers, uses its own title when it is the dockers’ turn for their union, under the general, common name of ‘Za rabochee delo’. As mentioned earlier, the newspaper is widely used to inform members of achievements, analysis and information about collective bargaining, and also to pass messages of solidarity among member organisations.

One of the few exceptions when they have mobilised their members for further action for a broader campaign was when they joined the picket against the new Labour Code in 2001. As I described in Chapter One, the active RPD organisations did not come out to present massive support to those weak alternative organisations in St Petersburg. The port committee joined the nationwide protests and warning strikes to show their opposition to the new Labour Code. Moiseenko, as the president of the port committee and the deputy president of RPD, participated in the joint appeal to support the draft of Oleg Shein. On 17 March, dockers at the seaport stopped their work for five minutes from 10pm and gave signals to show their support for ‘United Action against the Adoption of the government’s version of the new Russian Labour Code’.

The port organisation did not belong to any political party, and the leaders did not stand for major Russian political parties. Interestingly, if one were to judge by the party’s own propaganda, it would look as though the leadership of the port committee actively participated in the formation of the Russian Party of Labour in 2004. Nevertheless, the leaders did not see much reason for docker activists to participate in party work. There were two considerations for them to be involved in the establishment of the party. Firstly, the leaders were introduced via their relations with the Fund of Workers’ Academy, since the leader of the ‘Workers’ Academy’ had decided to form a stronger coalition with broader militant labour organisations. There were few problems for the dockers’ leaders to re-use their original link to be part of the tiny left-wing party. Secondly, this could be a way to keep a certain political weight by benefiting from the political coverage during the election campaign. In practice, these activists rarely made much effort to participate in the party.

The above activities certainly rely on the ability of the leadership of the port committee. The president of the port committee enjoys a highly respected role and is independent from all trade union committees. In interviews with the union’s active members most people expressed their respectful attitude toward the president of the port committee. And the president of the port committee, Aleksandr Moiseenko, asserted that the reasons why any union organisation might fall into factional struggles were all down to the personal factor. But so far within the dockers’ organisations, they have not experienced or confronted this problem. He compared the characteristics of their profession with those of railway workers. For the explanation of how to conduct their external relations, his opinion showed the port organisation’s attitude when they were called to participate in those issues not direct related to them. The leaders have clearly shown that they care more about what kind of result they can receive within the broader framework of the organisation. When I caught a chance to raise a conversation with a local activist (Vadim Bol’shakov) and the president of port committee over public protest, he replied as follows:

‘It is a great pity that our workers will not go to show their support for other organisations or others’ struggles. According to my own memory, I worked for 24 years on the port. I haven’t seen a single action carried out by workers’ (Moiseenko, October 21, 2003).

In addition, there is one interesting finding to note. In their regular meetings, the general atmosphere was very different from that in the RPLBZh meetings. It seemed that activists of RPD had avoided fierce internal conflict. Quarrels did happen, but it seemed mostly that they were not out of control. Personal denunciations between each other were rarely seen either. When asked how was the internal relationship among leaders of trade union committees, few mentioned that the most famous was the personal conflict between the two founders of the local organisation, and others would rather keep distant from standing on either side. There are still personal problems among the leaders, which mostly involved political ideology and personal characteristics, but they chose rather to ignore it than to raise it.¹¹³ Currently, the level of authority among the workers is obvious. When the president (Moiseenko) was present, he was the only person who could interrupt other people talking. When he was speaking, others would usually keep very quiet and not add their own opinions at the same time. When asked for details, the deputy presidents were quite cautious about not exposing more than the president might have said.

4.3.4 The commitment to social partnership

Interestingly, while sometimes even regional FNPR trade union leaders and free trade union leaders have criticised the framework and the principle of social partnership from time to time, the RPD port organisation have consistently and openly adopted the ‘principle of social partnership’. The union’s commitment to social partnership looks as though not surprising, as Ashwin (2004, p.42) pointed out ‘In Russia there is no room for doubt about the meaning of partnership’. Nonetheless, the activists of port organisations did not simply take the ‘principle’ as an abstract term in their official claims or documents, but actively developed their own approach.

For dockers at the St Petersburg Seaport, the idea of social partnership was born out of their concern over the future of the seaport operation in the early 1990s. The local dockers struggled to gain guarantees from the re-structuring port authorities. They fought to receive guarantees over wages and working conditions during the transition of the whole sector and also changes affecting the local seaport operation. The union organisation was officially recognised following these struggles. As a principle within the port labour relations, the idea and term of social partnership has been generally recognised by the port administrations and the dockers’ organisations. In the internal documents used between the employers and the union organisations, the term ‘social partnership’ has been often applied to define their moves. More importantly, in their daily activities, not only did the union leaders define the dimension of the common policy of the dockers’ trade union organisations, many activists also referred to the conception of social partnership. There are several varieties of use of the term which must be reviewed within their associated contexts. To distinguish the pattern of the dockers’ application of ‘social partnership’, the next section will demonstrate basic references in the activities of the dockers’ organisation at the workplace.

Firstly, social partnership develops towards raising competitive ability. By taking the term as a principle of mutual relations, one of the basic arguments over social partnership local dockers used to define is that it provides the base for expanding the competitive ability of the company. Like most supporters of social partnership in the field of industrial relations, the dockers’ union leaders have expressed and repeated their belief in winning the port’s or the terminal’s competitiveness among the ports around the Baltic region by improving the efficiency of work through the realisation of social partnership. The definition that for both sides of employers and their workers, following the principle of social partnership will definitely have a positive effect on the companies’ performance has been widely propagated (Doker, No 135, No 145, and No 147). Yet, what is to be done when considering the practice of social partnership in the general sense? In his analytical article published in the union newspaper, the chairperson of PKT union committee presented several basic elements for working out social partnership at the port. Firstly, he called on the employer to modernise the port equipment so that the workers would be able to serve their duties with more efficiency and less insecurity. Secondly, to make workers feel positive for their future life, which means they should be satisfied with the labour conditions at the port. Finally, these provisions should all be incorporated in their collective agreements. According to him, he concluded that once such a kind of collective agreement has been arrived at, ‘non-conflictual social partnership would then be available, so that the company would be able to reach higher productivity’ (Sarzhin, 2004, Doker, No 135, p.4). It is interesting to note that such kinds of reference to social partnership by the union activists normally came up when the employers and the workers were about to enter into the official collective bargaining period.

Secondly, social partnership involves reaching a proper (better) collective agreement. Following the general argument around the term ‘social partnership’, the activists and leaders did have such a belief: the collective agreement is the basis and the instrument of social partnership. The necessity of having an effective collective agreement was considered as the ‘solution’ to the changes in the external environment. The president of the RPD port committee insisted that while the new Labour Code eroded the base of the union’s status, reaching a better collective agreement has been the best solution to guarantee the working conditions for the port workers. It is important to note that the dockers’ support for social partnership has always been linked to the necessity of not only reaching a collective agreement, but also reaching a ‘better’ collective agreement. It is obvious that when the union activists say they are fighting for a ‘better’ agreement, they mean they are fighting for an ‘advanced’ (progressive) content of the agreement that will guarantee higher wages and better benefits than the previous ones. According to the official statement of the port committee,

‘The workers have a right to receive not simply maintenance of the present condition, but a preferable one. Only with that [a better collective agreement S.K.] can we confirm social partnership, because that can stimulate workers’ production motive and raise competitive strength’ (Port Committee of St Petersburg Seaport, RPD, 2005, Docker, No 155, p.1).

In other words, according to the union’s declaration as well, a worse version of the collective agreement not only ‘conflicts’ with the law but also ‘conflicts’ with the principle of social partnership.

By addressing their general aspiration to the concrete context of the 2004 collective bargaining campaign, the dockers wanted the employers to resolve the gap between their real wages and inflationary pressure. The RPD union activists asserted that in response to the development of the collective agreements at the St Petersburg Seaport, a better version of the new collective agreement for dockers would have to include wage indexation and a mechanism for raising real wages in the agreement. For this new goal, the dockers have tried hard to legitimise these demands by stressing the principle of social partnership in recent years. Their logic can be presented as the following: what is good for the workers is also good for the company; and maintaining such a balance can prove that the principle of social partnership is still observed in the relations between the employers and the workers.

Thirdly, social partnership involves definite social guarantees and social benefits for the workers. Here it means social partnership is no longer just an abstract principle to guide the interaction between the partners. In the case study we found that it was even used to authorise certain demands of workers. For example, the dockers stressed that the provision of social guarantees (sotsgarantiya) should be treated as the basis of social partnership. A similar expression for delivering ‘social security’ (sotsial’naya zashchishchennost’) also appeared among their aspirations. A docker who participated in bargaining for the 2003 collective agreement gave his own interpretation of the term as follows,

‘In striving to win social guarantees and social benefits for the dockers, it will lead to a rise in workers’ responsibility and their growing concern for the results of the company’s activity (a higher responsibility and better performance of the company), and the principles of social partnership will be realised more fully’ (Nefedov, 2002, Doker, No 121, pp.2-3).

Following their arguments, we can even find that the dockers have a more detailed listing to define what kind of role social partnership should perform in their working life at the port. It is interesting to note, in the sense of linking the necessity of various social benefits and the value of social partnership, that the exercise of social partnership has been used more than as a simple principle; it has become a specific object that reflects the demands of the workers’ side.

Most interestingly and importantly, although both employers and the union at the port have recognised the value of social partnership, the activists were not fully convinced that their employers would take a proper direction. If the previous points reflect the positive expectation of the dockers in terms of implementing social partnership, the following point shows a sort of militant attitude corresponding to the conditions in practice. Most local RPD activists did realise that social partnership is always accompanied by confrontation. As a docker wrote,

‘In my opinion, the partnership between the administration and the union committees has a kind of lopsided character. If the trade union had not put serious pressure on the administration or rejected the position of the administration then the administration would have decided to take advantage of it. It seems that the process never took a proper step without going to the arbitration commission or on the brink of a strike’ (Karetnikov, 2002, Doker, No 121, 10 November 2002, p.3).

Even during the negotiation such expressions could also appear. The dockers see the result of the collective agreement as a test of the nature of the existing partnership. When the negotiation entered a blocked stage, the workers started to show their frustration, which simultaneously gave a warning sign that the employers have moved away from the good practice of social partnership. An article contributed to their newspaper by a worker who participated in the preparation work in 2003 provides a typical example. In his article under the title of ‘Characteristic of Partnership’, he stressed that the nature of the two sides has always been that the representatives of the workers try hard to make a better collective agreement; but the representatives of the administration only want to truncate workers’ rights to a minimum standard. He then started to wonder whether it was worth continuing to sit in the negotiation meeting. As a representative of the workers’ side, he also implied that the employers’ side should ‘take the opportunity of a breakdown of negotiations to change this situation’ (Artemov, 2003, Doker, No 129, 10 June 2003, p.2). It is important to note that such messages were delivered by union representatives in order to give a signal that they were very disappointed with the negotiations.

All the above expressions may not demonstrate much to distinguish them from the general or ideal definitions of other Russian trade unions. As mentioned earlier, most social partnership supporters, even FNPR organisations, officially declare that the whole dialog process certainly includes negotiation, confrontation and compromise. The most relevant concern here, as was mentioned earlier, is that the lack of enforcement mechanisms generally presents the most critical problem for the practice of social partnership in Russia. The dockers’ union organisations have kept a very active position in the period of collective bargaining. They have expressed the will to achieve a mutually acceptable solution, while they have mobilised their members to be ready for further collective action. Obviously, the purpose of the move presented by union activists was to legitimise the reason why labour conflict occurred despite their commitment to ‘social partnership’.

Such concerns are often seen in leader’s opinions or comments on the organisation of cargo handling. The occasions that dockers’ leaders often deliver their belief in the improvement of social partnership to strengthen the port or the terminal’s efficiency among the ports of the Baltic region, have revealed a reference to the security of their current jobs. More interestingly, the pattern of raising social partnership in practice is totally not the same as among most FNPR trade unions ­– hence the St Petersburg port committee did more than only adopt ‘social partnership’ as a means to secure their survival. On many occasions, we can see union leaders like Moiseenko or Sarzhin applying the term social partnership in the context that dockers are ready to fight for their working conditions because they think they should be equally treated. Actions such as calling strikes for better wages (indexing of wages as another example) is an approach to reach a ‘reasonable condition’ as a precondition so that dockers can feel that they would like to work without troubles and together with the management to stabilize or strengthen the performance of the seaport. As my primary conclusion of this case-study, the fact that local union activists rely on mobilizing and strengthening union organisations to shape their perception of social partnership is clear. Such an approach, as distinguishable from the passive adoption within FNPR’s strategy, we can call the type of practice of social partnership as an aggressive pattern of exploiting partnership or social partnership in the making of labour relations.

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