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

5.4 Conclusion

• 
  Common recognition of the necessity to raise real wages among workers
  
• 
  Successful mobilisation 1: union conferences to authorise the decision of union activists
  
• 
  Successful mobilisation 2: functional strike committees established
  
• 
  Industrial actions step-by-step: from ‘Work without Enthusiasm’, via ‘Warning Strike’, to ‘Indefinite Strike’
  
• 
  Coordinated and practical solidarity messages organised by the port committee
  
• 
  Interpreting social partnership as a shell and weapon to strengthen the legitimacy of workers’ industrial action
  

‘The trade union acted very well and tactically, and their ideas in the confrontation have been growing. The dockers started from a ‘Work to rule’ / ‘Italian strike’. Later on, they organised a one-hour warning strike for three days. Finally, they started to conduct an indefinite strike only from 30 August, while they still have not called for a full strike….The point is every time before taking a new phase of struggle, they held union meetings, consulting with their members and workers. So that here is the result: one-hundred-percent solidarity and discipline, and fully militant atmosphere in their collective’ (Karine Clément, 20 September 2005).¹²⁶

Noteworthily, the interesting strategy of creating their own ground by using the conception of social partnership as an aggressive method for their struggle presents another important feature. The dockers’ pattern of pursuing the practice of social partnership is very different from that of FNPR trade unions. The appearance of such a specific pattern has a broader background. Benefits from the economic situation of the port are better than at many other industrial enterprises, and the perspective of the dockers’ collective agreement has been very different from the branch or regional, or national agreements normally dominated by the budget sectors. The local RPD organisation did more than use ‘social partnership’ to secure the survival of the union’s status. The leaders, like the president of the port committee or the chairpersons of union committees, referred to social partnership within the context that dockers are ready to fight for improving their working conditions rather than just emphasising that they should be treated equally. Furthermore, to reach their goal, the union activists and leaders applied the term ‘social partnership’ with strategic flexibility. The most important fact is to note that the strength of employing such a pattern is not only found in the declaration from union leaders but also from the union activists. My analysis of social partnership during their labour dispute event shows the ample expressions and varieties of social partnership among the workers, and that also demonstrates the union’s capacity is not made by the leaders alone but together with almost all their activists. That the local RPD organisations managed to apply social partnership and its solidarity message as the common expression of the active members demonstrates how central and established the union’s role has become and how well informed the activists are. The practice of the port dockers all together presented an interpretation of social partnership as a concrete moral pressure. It has therefore been quite clear that the dockers and their organisation learned well how to transform the conception and legitimacy of social partnership into a ‘warning (aggressive)’ weapon during the negotiation stage, and then into a defensive weapon for their actions.¹²⁷

Most importantly, we have seen the strong presence of their activists. Unlike many other labour struggles across Russia, the dockers’ strike committees of the 2004-2005 strike events at the port were functional and embraced more activists to participate. The local RPD organisation has recruited dozens of union activists from different companies acting together which keeps the union structure functioning as a whole. These activists are those who have acted in not only the union offices but even more at their working grounds – their brigades. This is a meaningful outcome as the dockers’ port organisation has successfully established the union networks together with the brigades, as described in the previous chapter. An important feature was that the union did not only perceive the lesson to be learned after the 2004 dispute, but also remembered to combine the idea with the mobilisation among the workers and the members, installed into their union-collective as a balanced combination. Moreover, the activists within the close union circle, though they occupy positions in different union or representation bodies, somehow act with each other in coordinated activities. The process of conducting strike action supported the practice of the established coordination – from the port committee to union committees and strike committees, the established structure for coordinating the actions had developed in a deliberate way. A very disciplined atmosphere can also be found as most activists build their opinions around the union’s decisions. In addition, whether there have been internal conflicts or quarrels over further strategy or not, these activists still kept adequate respect for each other. During the 2004-2005 strike events, each union committee retained its own activists, and all the coordinated local groups operated smoothly. Therefore, it is really unlikely to find this is a one-person trade union or a trade union run by a few union militants; on the contrary, it is a union organisation based on team work.

Chapter 6 Conclusion: theorising the transition of Russian organised labour

6.1 The workers came to self-organisation

The comparative study examined two groups of Russian transport workers and their local alternative union organisations, revealed contrasting views for a rarely touched but important field of Russian society. The research followed a unique approach, focused on the networks of these workers, to re-examine the intermediary space between ‘active’ union leader and the ‘passive’ ordinary workers which has long been the major concern in various case-study accounts.¹²⁹ The life stories and working experience of these research subjects were generously shared in this research. Their contribution played a major role in reviewing a range of analytic assumptions. The relatively privileged status in the Russian transport sector and the labour market provides the workers with a general background which to some extent eased their worst pressure of job insecurity – the complete shutdown or going idle of the enterprises. Such a general privileged background, however, was not a substantial factor in defining the labour relations of the sector, for the workers have also endured various harsh working conditions. Interestingly, the lack of Russian workers’ self-organisation, as commonly noted, was not found to be a sufficient characterisation to describe the situation in the two cases (especially in the case of the dockers). To note, the social environment of the two case-study objects comprises a highly urbanised international city where the workers (in the case studies) have a relatively higher sense of their real wages rather than receiving support or in-kind payment. (To some extent, the dependence on the distribution of material support, such as the receiving of ‘putevka’ does not play a significant role, as it does in the remote mining regions.) The various expressions of those active workers studied in previous chapters show that many of the workers did realise it is necessary to confront the administration, and did so to defend the workers’ interest, as well as to establish a effective labour unity.

Apart from their profession-related background, whether from an objective or subjective view, the two cases present firstly an impressive scene: there were active individuals who stood up for their rights, and aimed to provide an active defence for themselves and their fellow workers. Even under the worsening environment for alternative trade unions since the new Russian Labour Code came into effect, there were active individuals continually participated in their union activities. More importantly, these grassroots union activists demonstrate such a scene that in face of harsh labour conditions, not only several militant union leaders broke away from the position of the traditional, bureaucratic soviet-type trade unions, but a certain level of individuals did realise the necessity of self-organisation. The research observation witnessed how these workers made their criticism of the working conditions, fought with their nachal’nik, quit from the union struggle (because of exhaustion or victimisation, whether physically or spiritually), or even came back again. It might be also important to note, most of them did not embrace dramatic fantasy (revolution, social explosion etc.) over the prospect of union struggle. It seems that during the transition of labour relations in post-Soviet Russia there has been a possibility of a ‘progressive’ tendency occurring within the trade union movement.

Secondly, by analysing the real content of collective identity / community presence of the two selected groups, this research distinguishes an oversimplified assumption which often referred the development of alternative trade union to the status of their occupation or, in other words, to treat such self-organisation solely representing a sort of ‘craft collectivism’. In terms of workplace relations, alienated professional consciousness in the two cases existed in the way the ‘professional interest’ emerged as the most likely symbolic carrier for collective identity, developed in the context of the workplace relationships, and pursued in terms of fairly fragmented workplace interest. Neither the development nor the activity of these two ‘profession-based’ trade unions should be treated as any kind of ‘craft unionism’ in their practice. The collective feeling based on one single profession was not a substantial factor for the presence of collective identity in either case. The case of train drivers of RPLBZh in particular presents a clear scene that the separate managerial structure and conditions of Russian Railways made workers and members of their primary organisations deal on their own with various situations at the depots, rather than perceiving a collective identity on the basis of the whole regional / railway level or the profession. Though it is true that the specific profession has been a dominant concern for these alternative organisations, the concern has never been an actual force in struggles under the call for the workers’ common interests. In fact, under the image of fighting for their professional interests, the workers studied in the two cases only presented delicate and different coordination / solidarity connections despite many efforts that have made under their established territorial organisations. By clarifying that the factor of craft or sectoral advantage is not a sufficient explanation for the workers’ self-organisation, it becomes clear that the daily activities and the networks of the activists of these alternative trade unions therefore present a meaningful disproof to the craft or professional interest assumption, apart from referring them to the early time of the unions’ formation on the formal acknowledgment of the professional principle.

Finally, despite the constant contact between the two unions whether at federal or regional level, not to mention the unions’ close positions in the face of the course of new Russia’s ‘reform’ politics, the daily interactions and activities of the two unions’ primary organisations have, through the close observation, been found to be distinctive and different. Embedded in the content and characteristics of a fragmented community, together with the resort to individual solutions, the union organisational work and their organisational ability vary. The two similar-position trade unions were at very different stages, went through different contexts, and sharp contrasts in the forms of the two union organisations emerged. This research moved forward to examine why the two alternative trade unions in St Petersburg, though with similar external contacts and resources, differed in both their strength and their patterns of activity. The sharp contrasts in many aspects locate the two cases as two distinct communities. Their efforts at united action events identified their capacity and their real coordination. In concrete terms, the local RPLBZh union’s unity did not perform as a solid collective actor for common interests but relied on the personal energy of active, committed individuals to lead the organisation work; the local RPD unity, by contrast, did achieve a solid collective actor, in which workers were well-represented and coordination, sustained by an ample number of union activists at the workplace.

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