Shih-Hao Kang a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology

5.2.2 Moving on to an ‘Italian strike’

A docker expressed his support like this:

‘Workers of our company – they are people who have a high level of professional training, possessing all civil rights, which include rights of their professions. To present and stand up for our own interests, to create favourable labour conditions … these are their specific business that is carried out with the help of our union organisation, mainly through the Collective Agreement. The necessity of retaining the stability of the company, by reaching a collective agreement between the workers and the employers has been clearly seen. And we will struggle for this goal by all possible means’ (AlekseiK, docker-machine operator of VSK, June 05, 2005).

On July 1, the local newspaper ‘Metro’ published an article denouncing the decision of the port committee. The union activists were strongly outraged. They believed such an attack was deliberate propaganda of the employer and it had been evident that their administration was reluctant to negotiate with the union so that they had bought off the media to discredit the workers’ demands in front of the public. The port committee fought back against the media campaign.

Following the start of the labour dispute at the port, the union organisations took the initiative to form a conciliation commission from 6 – 20 July, and tried once more to change the employers’ position, in which several points of compromise were offered. The process, however, was paralyzed despite the workers’ representatives offering a softer proposal; in their words, a compromise, and the commission soon appeared to have been in vain. The ineffective commission therefore existed for only two weeks. By realising that there was little hope of negotiation with the administration, the dockers’ union organisation decided to hold initiative conferences at the three companies to decide their further action. By 20 July, the union committee officially recognised that the task of the commission had failed.

5.2.3 Moving on to a warning strike

The conference of the union organisation at PerStiKo was set to be a model for all involved parties. The content of the conference of PerStiKo workers was as follows:¹¹⁸

1. Listened to the work report of the president of the port committee. Approved the work the port committee and the union committee had done for the new collective agreement as well as their direction of the recent collective labour dispute.

2. Officially condemned the administration’s rejection of signing the collective agreement for a new term. Accused the administration’s position of worsening workers’ conditions, and that had damaged the prospects of the company’s development and damaged relations of social partnership.

3. Authorised the situation that due to the disagreement over the content of the new collective agreement, workers decide to carry out one-hour warning strikes, which is a right in accordance with Article 37 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, Article 410 of the Russian Labour Code and Article 14 of the Russian Federation Law of ‘On the Resolution of Collective Labour Disputes’. The warning strike will take place on 25, 26 and 27 July 2005. For the warning strike, each conference provided their estimation of how many workers will be mobilised (for example, about 1,000 dockers in PerStiKo) to participate in the action (together a detailed strike timetable was also released).

4. Elected a strike committee comprising five members in each company. The strike committee was formed as the controlling body, directing and monitoring the strike action at workplaces. The strike committee at PerStiKo comprised in total five workers, even a mechanic worker was included. All of them were either formal leaders or activists of the primary union organisations of RPD.

5. The strike committee proposed to the administration a list of selected works as minimum duty during the period of the strike. The strikers would also keep a clear policy regarding self-restriction of the effects of the stoppage on production.

6. Called the employer to dismiss the general director of the company, for he had failed to promote the growth of freight turnover volume, failed to promote employees’ work incentives, had broken social partnership relations and caused social tension among the collectives of the company, which is damaging the prospects of the company.

7. The port committee, as the authorised representative of the workers, is expected to organise a second-phase meeting of the current conference in one-month’s time.

On 18 July a press release announced that the management of the companies of the group JSC Seaport of St Petersburg was working to explain its position so that the dockers could independently assess the validity of their proposed variant of the collective agreement.

Following the formation of the strike committees, the roles of all levels of the union organisation had seen some changes, while the port committee still carried the most important coordinating role. It was clear that the port committee still operated as the head, while the new establishment corresponded to the legal strike procedure. For example, each strike committee presented a common proposal of ‘Agreement ‘‘On the Positive Resolution of the Collective Labour Dispute’’, prepared by the port committee, to notify their administration that it would be possible to call off the strike action if the administration would seriously consider the new proposal and be ready to make some concessions. The tension between the two sides, however, was not reduced, but the response from the employers’ side was beyond the dockers’ expectation. The employers did not choose to confront a single member of the strike committees or a single strike committee; instead of that, the administration seemed to believe it would be more powerful to put direct and fierce pressure on the port committee. On 21 July, the general director of JSC St Petersburg Seaport, Vishnyakov, issued an order commanding the port committee to move out of its current office by 21 August. Following the order, communications of the office were soon cut off.

Seeing the position of the employers’ side, the rank-and-file were organised to provide more concrete support for the RPD port committee. The dockers tried to defend the union’s position with such words,

‘The employers shouldn’t treat our demands as the personal opinions of our union leaders. The demands present what we want and what we decided to do. And these demands were just confirmed once again at the recent conference of our collectives. Besides, I was a conference delegate, and can ensure all the demands as I mentioned – they are our joint and collective demands, and we will not give them up’ (Savel’ev, 2005, Doker, No. 155, 25 July 2005, p.2).

Notwithstanding the fact that the union leadership was still under pressure from the administration, the one-hour warning strike was carried out at the seaport by the dockers of the three companies on 25, 26 and 27 July, as planned earlier. Seeing the strike had become unavoidable, a militant atmosphere started to develop. A group of workers from PerStiKo (one was a member of the strike committee) posted their opinion in which they asserted that the union, the representatives of the bargaining commission and the dockers should grant the employers no more chance to make a compromise. They argued that over the past negotiation process, the workers’ representatives had been too quick to compromise by allowing the employers’ representatives to present their own proposal. Such an easy-to-grant attitude, ‘We consider that has been a mistake’, according to these workers,

‘The development afterward demonstrated that their employers were always reluctant to make any compromise. Instead of seriously considering the union’s original demands, the employer’s side was just taking advantage of the workers, and constantly thrown new proposals onto the negotiation table. Therefore, over the process of negotiation for a new collective agreement, the workers’ side has always exhaustively discussed whether or not to consider the proposals from the other side, but on the employers’ side, they never step back from their position’ (Barsykov et al., 2005, Doker, No. 155, 25 July 2005, p.1).

These grassroots members strongly suggested that further negotiation should only focus on the workers’ proposals, and put all their effort into it. Another opinion for the solution of the current dispute, however, seemed to win majority support. The compromise, which became a new strategy of the union, was to push the port administration to sign a collective agreement based on the previous collective agreement (2002-2005). As a member who participated in both the collective agreement commission and the conciliation commission revealed,

‘I believed there is one solution to be reached – in the case we demand better conditions for workers, but the employer demands worse ones, then in order to get out of the dead-end situation there is only one way left – to renegotiate the current collective agreement, which unfortunately does not improve the workers’ conditions, but at least does not make their conditions worse either’ (AleksandrN, docker of ChSK July 20, 2005).

Such a compromise did not receive a positive response from the employers’ side though. The docker thus expressed his question later on as following:

‘If we still can’t reach agreement on such a ‘per se’ compromised proposal, it will just be due to the representative of the employer who does not want to resolve the conflict but rather to aggravate and inflame it. Workers don’t need a worsening of the conflict. But why and for whose interest are the representatives of the employer stirring it up?’ (Nefedov, 2005, Doker, No. 155, 25 July 2005, p.3)

Despite the warning strike having taken place, the employers did not call the union organisations to hold new negotiations or to resolve the dispute. On the first day of the warning strikes, the general director of JSC St Petersburg Seaport issued an open letter, while also dispatching the management of the three stevedore companies to arrange direct meetings with dockers at brigade meetings. The representatives of the employer claimed they would definitely take the union’s opinion into account as a precondition for future labour relations and promised the port workers will still retain their rights. The union leaders and strike committees asserted that there was no concrete promise from the claim and the employers were still opposed to concluding a fair collective agreement. According to such an analysis, the union decided to set up a second-phase conference on 12 August and to discuss further industrial action. At the end of July, officials of St Petersburg city government had met both parties to the dispute. The dockers claimed under the current complicated situation, the conflict cannot be resolved without the intervention of a third party – the authorities. The city mayor, Valentina Matvienko, dispatched the president of the committee for transport policy, Andrei Karpov, to help to form a tripartite commission to work out a solution of the current dispute. After the 3-day warning strike, both sides agreed to form such a commission. The administration of the stevedore companies supported the former chairperson of the Committee for St Petersburg Transport, Aleksei Chumak, to chair the commission. The trade union preferred other candidates, revealed their hope that the mediator should be ‘a most independent person’, but also claimed they were waiting for the administration’s official document about the confirmation of their favourable candidate. The initiative then came to a halt due to the disagreement over the independent candidates. The port committee therefore came back to preparing a second-phase conference.

On 29 July, the general director of PerStiKo contacted a Russian labour activist personally and explained that he and his management did follow the principle of social partnership; furthermore, the dockers actually had got their wage rise. Another letter under the name of the general director of JSC Seaport of St Petersburg was sent off to the ProfTsenter, stressing similar ideas.¹¹⁹

5.2.4 Moving on to an indefinite strike

The conferences also decided the general scale, agenda, and principles of the strike action. The strike was planned to start from 8:00 am, 30 August, the stoppage time can be up to 90 % of the working time, and in total about 1,600 workers (not only dockers) would be mobilised to participate in the strike action. The conference resolution emphasised that the stoppage will specially target the loading of cargoes from the company’s share-holders. Each strike committee was authorised to be in charge of producing a concrete, detailed strike agenda for the working shifts, as soon as the conference resolution was adopted. The content demonstrated the support from their brigades.

The chairpersons of union committees were also elected as members of strike committees. These strike committees, however, were not simply formed to be a shell of union leadership. For carrying out their duties, the strike committee was required to meet not less than twice a week. After the conference, on 16 August, all members of the three strike committees held a joint meeting in the office of the port committee, to discuss the concrete rights and duties of the strike committees.

After the meeting, the chairpersons of the strike committees explained the scale and content of their action to the employers. Several points were listed: a) Workers will complete the minimum work of their required duty and the extra norm which workers have agreed to take; b) The strike committee also made it clear that they would not allow strike-breakers to take over their duties. Actually, consideration of whether the management really would hire temporary workers to replace the striking dockers was one of the reasons why the strike committee chose a part-time stoppage as their first method. Furthermore, they also warned that such temporary workers would easily cause damage to the operational instruments.

The response of the administration toward the port workers’ decision was very acute. They accused that the local RPD organisations were trying to bring about a revolution. On 15 August, the heads of JSC Seaport of St Petersburg and the stevedore companies described the strike action as provocative and argued that it could not promote either the development of social partnership or better conditions for workers in these companies.¹²⁰ Apart from their criticism, the administration did not give up defending its position. Apparently, the administration expected the pressure on the union organisations and the attempt to alienate the union apparatus from their members would make the union call off the strike. Therefore, the administration and the employers were using every possible media access to show their understanding of the dispute. The general director of the Seaport, Chlyadin, replied to the Moscow-based ProfTsenter, insisting that the workers’ conditions according to the employers’ draft of the collective agreement would get better not worse; all the proposals of the administration of the company followed the direction of developing social partnership; that dockers’ pay had already increased by 21-24% in the first quarter of 2005 against the previous year; the employers were also proposing a further 1% addition to pay which workers could choose either to transfer to the trade union, as before, or to their personal accounts, which would give them the right to decide for themselves what should be done with this money.¹²¹

At the same time, the scenario had developed further. On 17 August, Aleksei Chichkanov, the first deputy chairperson of the Committee of Municipal Properties of St Petersburg (KUGI) announced that KUGI, as the holder of the city-owned shares of JSC Seaport of St Petersburg, will not interfere in the labour dispute. He also stressed that the dispute at the seaport was totally normal and often seen in the West; and the most effective method of expressing KUGI’s concern was to sell its 28% holding in the shares of JSC Seaport of St Petersburg.

On the same day, the port committee held a press conference in the ‘House of Journalists’. The press conference was to reveal their future action from 30 August and to explain why the dockers had decided to go on strike. The main speakers at the press conference included the chairpersons of the three strike committees, Deputy president of the port committee (Vladimir Petrov), Consultant of the port committee (Mikhail Popov, Professor of Economic Department of SPbGU), and also with the presence of the chairpersons of the RPD union committees of PKT (Aleksandr. Sarzhin) and of Neva-Metall (Vladimir Karataev).

Petrov revealed that the final method of their strike action would be discussed on 19 August by members of the strike committees. In general, the strike action will mobilise all RPD members of the three involved companies, which was approximately 1,600-1,700 out of the total work force of 2,600 workers. The union also expected that some non-RPD membership port workers would also participate in their action.

By distinguishing the port ownership we can divide it into three major ownership groups: Group Mordoshev (Neva-Metall); Group Yuzhilin (PKT); Group Lisin (PerStiKo, VSK and ChSK). The two chairpersons of the union committees at PKT and Neva-Metall both confirmed that in their companies, they had reached their own collective agreement for 2005-2008 with their employers, in which their employers had made their compromise, and committed themselves to provide better conditions than the previous time. Especially, the mechanism of real wage increases is included in the new agreement of PKT Company. According to the speakers, that such a compromise could be made was eventually associated with the fact that their employers were willing to develop the production and business at the St Petersburg Seaport; on the contrary, the owner of the other three companies, Mr Lisin, was more oriented to developing his business at other Baltic seaports, such as Liga, Ventspils and Lispaya seaports. And since he and his followers were more interested in developing his enterprise interests with his Baltic partners, he would not hesitate to undermine the future of the St Petersburg Seaport as a means of removing his real opponents – the port dockers. In addition, Petrov delivered his own opinion that one could wonder whether the employers would like to serve the interest of other countries. The union argued that the strike would not bring great damage to the port function, not only because of the scale of the work stoppage but also because the demand for cargo transfer is lower during this season. The main speaker emphasised that the strike will be carried out with a constructive character – because the workers’ aim is to maintain port performance. Petrov also condemned the order of the administration in which the port committee was forced to move out from its current office, and the communications had been cut off since the order was issued.

Professor Popov made his appeal to the city government to come out and stand on the side of the struggling dockers, although he had criticised the city authority’s position. He also concluded that, ‘It had been clear that the deputy president (and former president) of the City Committee for Transportation, Chumak, stood on the side of the employers’ (Press conference recording, August 2005).

On 19 August, the three strike committees made their final regulation of their strike actions and informed the employers with an official statement. Again, the form of their official message to the employers was highly united, only some details of the strike schedules for their working shifts were different, in which the concern of the different characters of the shift management in each company had been taken into account. The three documents were put together and published in the dockers’ newspaper.

The technique of the strike demonstrated the ability of the strike committees in coordinating the strike action among their members. Each strike committee was assigned adequately to react to the pressure of the management, and to protect the labour rights of striking workers at the workplace.

The so-called ‘indefinite strike’ was clear as an idea that came out from the conferences. Its content in practice, however, was a bit different for workers. Even the understandings of the members of the strike committees of the coming strike showed ambiguous interpretations among the workers. For example, a member of the strike committee at VSK, revealed what can be done for their workers during the strike:

‘During the time of the work stoppage, workers will use the chance to conduct collective discussion over the current problem and its solutions, to study advanced experiences of their comrades, including foreign experiences, to learn a higher professional and educational level and study for younger dockers’ He also added that even the strike will go with constructive contents, ‘All of our plan can be considered as that we only called a strike, but that it was the employer who created the basis for its happening’ (Galushko, 2005, Doker, No. 160, August 19, 2005, p.3)

Understandably, the pressure of conducting the strike raised great inner pressure on the activists. Their caution at maintaining the strike under the legal framework somehow caused some confusion in the implementation of the action. For example, the chairperson of the strike committee at VSK explained his idea about the strike:

‘According to the information published in the mass media, the administration has planned to cut the production capacity, to reduce the freight flow, to arrange transfer of cargoes to other sea ports, including the ports in the Baltic countries. For this concern, we (the strike committee) do not plan a full stoppage of uploading and offloading work. We will undertake a contrasting stoppage of work on the basis of “working to rule”’ (Zakharov, 2005, Doker, No. 160, 19 August 2005, p.3).

While preparing the strike action, a new negotiation also started. At a meeting on 18 and 19 August, the union representatives tried to present a new proposal to convince the employers to re-launch negotiations. The administration then recalled their earlier order which compelled the port committee to move out of their office in the administration building by 21 August. The strike committee suggested that the administrations of the three companies should maintain workers’ wages from 20 August to 20 September at the same level as the pre-strike time, and in return for that, workers would promise to fulfil all handling work. According to such an arrangement, both sides would then have time to try to overcome their disagreement over the collective agreement. However, the administration did not respond immediately.

On 24 August the port administration held a conference and claimed that the administration and the dockers had almost reached consent on all disagreements. So, ‘hopefully, before 30 August, the collective agreement could be signed’, said the general director of JSC St Petersburg, Sergei Chelyadin. The president of the port committee, Moiseenko, also informed journalists that the conflict may finish soon, once the employers confirmed that they were ready to make concessions. The further negotiation meeting on 26 August, however, stuck in deadlock again. Chelyadin declared that the conflict was with the trade union bosses, who were struggling for power.

Before the strike could take place, the port committee reviewed their strategy and checked the latest information they had received. Convinced by the analysis of Professor Popov, the consultant of the port committee, the union leaders expressed their belief that the owner seemed to ignore the seriousness of the dispute for their own purposes. In other words, the dockers were convinced that the group of Lisin would like to exploit the conflict underway at the port for their own advantage, and to subordinate the whole event to serve as a part of the enterprise’s business tricks. Due to such a fear, the port committee issued an appeal to the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. The union leaders accused the port administration of damaging faith in social partnership, and the fundamental intention of their employers could damage the interest of the strategic industry of the country. Later on, the port committee also delivered an open appeal to the St Petersburg city government.

Despite an estimation released by the port administration which claimed that the impact of the strike would impose losses of about one million dollars every month, the port committee on the other side defended the action as being ‘constructive for keeping the port’, and argued that they would not make an enormous loss on the port function. As the previous strike agenda planned earlier, the port was peaceful; and as the strike committees guaranteed, the strike did not lead to a full stoppage on the territory of these three companies. The three strike committees set up a joint schedule for their strike action. From 30 August until 30 September would be the first phase of the strike. During this first phase only docker-operators but not all employees would be despatched to participate in the strike action. The participant strikers carried out only a one-hour stoppage on their shifts.

The dockers of these three companies faced a similar ownership background, and therefore they could present similar demands. The conditions of strike preparation at each company did not prevent the strikers from being subject to similar pressure from their own management. A member of the strike committee of ChSK, for example, complained that their administration tried to conduct a ‘survey’ to put psychological pressure on their workers. The administration asked workers to hand over a personal statement to reveal their attitudes about participation in the strike action. ‘This is not the first time the employer put pressure aiming to force workers not to use their legal right. We will need a stronger campaign to protect workers in our company’ (AleksandrN, docker of ChSK, July 5 2005).

On 2 September the first talk between the two parties was held since the strike action started. The representatives of the employer, however, did not make any compromise. The union’s representatives also rejected reconsideration of other suggestions from the employer’s side that were not included in the earlier disagreement protocol. The union leaders revealed that their representatives would insist on focusing on proposals that were related to their original disagreement with the employers.

While the negotiation with the employers was re-launched, there was still no sign that the employers were willing to discuss the union’s proposals. The labour collective supported the union’s decision; some dockers voiced their indignation to the trade union that it is time to consider stronger strike action. The options included from extending the current one-hour / one-and-half-hour stoppage to a three-hour / four-and-half-hour work stoppage. The news released showed that some major clients of port cargo handling had started (or started to consider) to stop delivering their products through the Seaport of St Petersburg. Rusal’ company (an aluminium producing company), for example, declared that the company will deliver their export goods through other Russian or Ukrainian seaports if the situation at St Petersburg seaport has not stabilised. The port administration admitted the port faced a big loss of business. In July-August, the volume of cargo handling fell 50 thousand tonnes, and expected another 150 thousand tonnes loss for September. On 9 September, the union leadership revealed that the dockers were preparing for a full-stoppage strike. The strike was suspended on 12 September, corresponding to the plan of the strike committees. The strike committees decided to strengthen the current 1-1.5 hour stoppage for each shift into a 4-5 hour one, which means a half-shift-working scheme; and the new method would begin from 14 or 16 September. The port committee released such a decision to the public on 13^th, but one day later the port committee came to claim that the situation had changed and the earlier declaration of the strike committee may change.

After the new round of negotiation with the employers, agreement between the port administration and the union representatives was soon reached. The agreement recognised that the union would make concessions and the employers would make moves too. Only the articles about the mechanism of indexing dockers’ wages were not included. On the workers’ side, agreement should be officially confirmed by the conferences later on. The strike committees declared that the strike action would be suspended from September 16 until 21, when the conference would officially decide the state of the strike.

The port committee also made their request for a future agreement, which is to reconsider the negotiation with three original programmes as follows. They are, ‘On the Form of Raising Real Wages for Workers at St Petersburg Seaport’; ‘On Workers’ Bonus according to the Basic Organisational Performance’; ‘On the Provision of the Activities of the Workers’ Representative-Port Organisation of Russian Dockers’ Union, St Petersburg Seaport’. The union leaders warned the real harmony will come about only if the collective agreement met a satisfactory result.

At 9 am on 21 September, conferences of the three union organisations were held; the agreement signed on 14 September was officially adopted by the conferences of workers of the three companies. At 3 pm the dockers officially declared the strike action suspended. The workers would return to work according to their normal regime.

From 3 October to 7 November, an official period for the receipt of all applications to buy the state-held shares in JSC Seaport of St Petersburg began. On 10 November the Russian Federal Property Fund (RFFI) conducted a public auction to sell the state-held shares (48.79 %) in the ОАО St Petersburg Sea Port. Chupit Limited, a Cyprus registered company acting on behalf of the Novolipetsk Metallurgical Combine, which already controlled the port, became the final buyer, paying an initial 802.5 million roubles for the state shares.¹²²

In addition, we may also find that the activists chose to make clearer the responsibility of employers while calling the government’s attention.

During the conflict or the strike period, the union’s strategy rarely appealed to the state power or local governmental bodies to intervene as a third party. Such facts reveal the lack of the union’s interest in the state’s regulatory ability. For defending their specific interest, the dockers ignored any of the other ETS or branch agreements which are normally signed by FNPR trade unions as the representative of labour. The only relevance of the state’s role they would have to apply is the reference to the Labour Code or the report of the labour inspectorate. Over recent years, no dispute or industrial action at the St Petersburg Seaport ever suggested forming a tripartite structure for a comprehensive dialogue. In fact, the latest situation appeared over the 2005 labour dispute, when the internal argument about whether the union should finally appeal to the city government for intervention clearly showed the fact again that, in referring to methods of resolving the conflict, the dockers did not seriously expect any role for local government establishments.¹²³

The development of the 2005 labour dispute revealed the dockers’ limited expectation of the involvement of the state. The worst situation occurred, in which the administration was not really bothered by the warning strike, and the dockers for the first time found the port administration very tough at offering no compromise. As mentioned in the previous section, rumours about the owners’ intentions also started to spread. Workers started to believe that the Danish-background administration intended to exploit the conflict and was ready to ruin the port performance of the Russian Federation in their own investment interests. The port committee started to make a new appeal to the federal government and asked President Putin to consider whether it might be possible to put the port under state control or some form of public ownership. The new and serious appeal, however, did not really become the main issue over the strike period. In addition, despite the worsened situation between the union and the administration, this appeal was actually more like a flash reflection of the influence of left-wing figures acting in the campaign.¹²⁴ More importantly, the response of the RPD union organisation was not to call for a solution through three-party negotiation. The idea was to replace the ‘untrustworthy’ owners with a ‘respectable’ state owner under the framework of the worker-employer relationship, rather than to create a compatible institution for reconciling the interest conflict.

Noteworthily, when the union leaders were convinced by the analysis and press reports that the owner may discard the function of St Petersburg seaport by moving the business to other Baltic seaports, the determination of the union leaders was seriously shaken and the further strategy was seriously confused among the activists. The weak point of the union activities derived from the lack of experience when in face of uncertain ownership conditions.¹²⁵