Rethinking the distinct forms of workplace trade unionism

6.2.1 How do the favourable and the unfavourable conditions matter?

As an immediate result of the different factors mentioned above, the impact of the adoption of the new Russian Labour Code then caused further differences between the two union organisations. Klimova and Clément (2004) indicated that the new Labour Code has undermined the rights of minor trade unions in Russia (as these organisations mostly are ‘free’ trade unions), though the TO RPLBZh suffered from their marginal status even before the impact of the new Labour Code. According to this research, we see the fact that the RPLBZh organisation could carry out its activism in the past, like some other alternative trade unions, was more or less a result of the advantages for their earlier position granted by the old Labour Code. With such a condition a weak union organisation at that time was able to rely on one unpaid union staff member to represent and support the union’s daily activities. Since the adoption of the new Labour Code, such status and advantage soon seriously deteriorated. Their exclusion from the status of participating in collective bargaining projects a clear example: losing the organisational right has forced the RPLBZh organisations (as well as KSP OZhD), to survive, primarily, by meeting demands related to individual labour disputes among their members. Against the militant spirit and heroic efforts among activists of the RPLBZh primary organisations and other non-RPLBZh trade unions, their individualised practice hardly could generate further prospect to increase the authority of these active organisations. And such an individualised approach to the membership meant that the leaders were frequently left exhausted. By and large, the individual solutions associated with workplace fragmentation meant that most non-RPLBZh free trade unions on the October Railway only established their fragile membership on a fragile basis. For the RPLBZh primary organisations, their common character appeared to be that each union committee worked on its own, so that a common interest for all train drivers as a whole did not hold serious attraction for the union. The view that better coordination had ever existed was only found once under a controversial leader who was paid with the sponsorship of the American counterpart, AFL-CIO. The sponsorship turned out to be a condition for a flash of TO RPLBZh activism, but only revealed that such a style of leadership was a weak factor in forming an alternative orientation within the social organisation of production, which it simultaneously had little effect on local unionism. The more critical matter is that such vulnerable consent to an individualised pattern of representation has been reinforced by the condition of their isolated collectives.

More importantly, the case study also revealed that while recognising the necessity of unity, the local activists set up a ‘confederation’, intending to unite these tiny occupational organisations and to act on a joint basis. Based on the fragile coordination derived from the foregoing ‘solidarity discouraging’ factors, instead of supporting each other to strengthen each union’s authority, the small KSP OZhD confederation finally disappeared together with most affiliated organisations. The rise and fall of KSP OZhD shows embarrassing evidence that the activists’ perception of embracing a broader community never succeeded, which also clearly demonstrates the importance of favourable conditions for their subjective ability. Intellectually and practically, such unique individualised practice can be treated as a problematic dimension of the dynamics of the Russian trade union movement that even goes beyond Gordon and Klopov’s conclusion on the tendency of individualism of workers in a better position as mentioned in Chapter Three. After all, this has become an issue of whether an organisation can still be treated as a union at the workplace while it presents merely heroic energy as collective efforts and means to overcome individual victimisation?

As presented in Chapters Four and Five, the structure of RPD primary organisations at St Petersburg Seaport projects one of the most visible differences for this comparative study. The dockers’ union employed the relationship of the brigade organisations, and enjoyed such benefit for union mobilisation. The combination of union organiser activists together with the brigade system provided the RPD port organisations with scope to recruit members and union activists. Such an impressive characteristic did not appear in the case of the railway workers. The content of brigade work processing allowed them to have a more convenient resource to conduct work stoppages. Moreover, apart from the more recent hardship coming from the employers’ managerial pressure, the RPD organisations did not face direct oppression from the rival PRVT organisations. The process of collective bargaining, on the contrary, as we have seen in the case of RPD port organisations at the Seaport of St Petersburg, allowed an active and majority-status trade union to develop its mobilisation capacity. More importantly, the RPD port organisations did successfully retain a dozen activists who were involved in frequent union meetings, conferences and the mobilisation process, so that we have seen that the efforts were carefully carried out not by a single leader but by a handful of union activists. With its successful position, the dockers’ primary union organisation did associate under the coordinating role of the port committee. The relatively successful organisational work even meant that the term ‘social partnership’, commonly used by their activists, was associated with their own interpretations instead of restraining their collective action during the labour conflict. By and large, the strike actions in 2004 and 2005 clearly show their impressive mobilisation capacity. Table 6.1 lists a simple comparison of several key features from the research observation of the two sets of case-studies. The list shows that key solidarity-weakening factors are not seen in the case of the RPD port organisation of St Petersburg Seaport.

Table 6.1 The basic organisational features of the two case studies (by 2005)

Position / Trade union	Organisation of Work (number of workers)	Workplace distribution	Presence of collective identity	Union status	Number of local union activists* (including official leaders)	Opposition Union / relationship
RPLBZh TO October Railway	Brigade (2)	Broad	Weak; Prone to individualism	Weak	3-5 paid staff: 0	ROSPROFZhEL / Often conflicting
RPD St Petersburg Seaport	Brigade (50)	Concentrated	Workplace collectivism	Strong	15-25 paid staff: 5	PRVT / Non threatening

6.2.2 Local dockers’ resistance – an advanced model for unions’ strategy and leadership?

With little doubt, the struggles of the active, well-organised port organisations of St Petersburg dockers could anyway be seen as a meaningful example for Russian workers’ organisation. Indeed, it seems fairly necessary to maintain united leadership to provide stable coordination in action. It looks as though evident that for any coordination there is a need for a certain union strategy and leadership capacity to create the ‘space’ to develop their approaches to resolving labour or even social conflicts. When reviewing the failure of the miners’ strike movement in Russia, Borisov (2000) suggested that the problem of the miners’ union was its preoccupation with maintaining the interests of the branch, which led to substantial failure in supporting its members in conflict with their management (and that was the reason for more spontaneous strikes and their own management actions in the second half of the 1990s). He then explained it thus:

‘This is not the result of the subjective intentions of the leaders of the trade union, who are quite genuine in their commitment to the well-being of their members, but of the failure of the leaders of the union to adapt their strategy and tactics to changing economic and political conditions…. Beneath the appearance of solidity, the real organisation and solidarity of the coal miners at the level of the mine and the shop was being steadily eroded. The possibility of a renewal of the miners’ trade union depends on the possibility of its renewal from below’ (Ibid. p. 224).

The conclusion above stressed the importance of the union organisation’s capacity. It looks as though the case of RPLBZh and KSP OZhD appears as an unsuccessful example which showed that within such an individualised, isolated environment (precondition), a solid union organisation is critically required for either solidarity making or collective action. In contrast to the situation of the RPLBZh territorial organisation, the RPD port organisation at St Petersburg seems to provide a respectable ‘renewal-from-below’ with a solid, well-organised and well-coordinated organisation which has empowered the separate groups of workers. It all seems as though the dockers’ union structure did present a well-conducted collectivism and a grass-rooted union organisation.

The further analyses, however, has raised a critical question of whether the dockers’ struggle presents a positive pattern for the transformation of Russian labour relations? Or, how much could we take their workplace unionism model as a sufficient resource to support their ‘not-in-the-same-workplace’ fellow workers so that the union organisation could indeed demonstrate its strength through its representation and expansion? The analyses of the organisational ability of RPD in Chapters Four and Five have practically demonstrated the answer to the meaning of a ‘model’ trade union organisation. It would be misleading to conclude that the dockers’ case shows that the union had overcome the influence of workplace relations. In fact, the conclusion of the case study of the dockers challenged that assumption – one should not ignore the internal weakness of their collective-union relations.

6.2.3 Effective coordination vs. workplace fragmentation

The ‘positive’ case of the dockers in this comparative study, essentially, reveals a certain disjuncture of their efforts to integrate the fragmented collectives into a broader ‘unity-as-itself’; their strength as a whole, anyway, did not go beyond their workplace. The uneven strength among their primary organisations (collectives) exposes that the local dockers’ strong union representation and solidarity mainly appeared in one or two companies. Not to mention that these stevedore companies locate in a close and relatively narrow area when we compare the local dockers to local train drivers. The realisation of the idea of the ‘labour collective’ (in the case of local dockers) has been a narrow identification, and their activities exposed the collectivity making that was based on union activists without a reflection of the whole workplace relations. The lack of a genuine professional trade union standing on a broader or closer base reflects the obvious presence of ‘solid’ workplace unionism in this study. Similarly, even if a trade union organisation had embraced all the positive organisational capacity of the dockers, functioning as an active union organisation to form a united organisation representing the interest of the workers as a whole, the community would be more like something ‘represented’ by the great efforts of the port committee. Returning to the train drivers’ case, even if the RPLBZh organisations and activists could have reached the same union status and strength as at the St Petersburg Seaport, in which there was a possibility of the formation of a stronger brigade collectivity (assuming they could take over the control of planerka, the depot meeting so that more favourable conditions resulted), together with less oppression from the administration and FNPR union, and their coordination pattern improved as did the local RPD organisations, the RPLBZh might just sustain several strong primary organisations at their own depots.

Regarding the previous clarification it is then meaningful to review the fact that under the very distinct forms of union organisation there are several shared characteristics identifying the immediate boundary of the dockers’ collective self-organisation as well as the meaning of workplace relations for the union organisation as a whole. First, almost all union activists expressed little possibility to mobilise their members themselves, to participate in public action (protest, picket, rally etc.). The scene was not very surprising, for it has been widely described in various research literatures; yet the point raised here to some extent reflects the shared characteristics among the active unions. As mentioned in previous chapters, the union activists in the first case often mentioned the difficulty of mobilising their workers, and did not believe in efforts to strengthen their skills or authority in convincing their members. Whether we consider the leaders or the members, their solutions are rather individualistic, partly due to the fact that collective action has been perceived as ineffective; partly due to the trade unions having poor resources for efficient contact. For the ‘model’ trade union in this study – the dockers’ organisation – we see that the leaders also expressed the difficulty of mobilising their workers, and that was also why their strike actions were rather organised in a very delicate way.

Second, we could note the fact that the uneven strength of these primary organisations and the strength of union unity represents merely the capacity of core primary organisations. In the case of the local dockers, the stories behind their solidarity appeal campaigns exposed the embarrassing situation that the port committee was not able to attract actual solidarity from other collectives － their members in other stevedore companies (which were divided by the attitudes of the primary organisations towards their own management policy). The uneven strength even occurred among the units close to each other. Moreover, neither the local RPLBZh organisation nor the local RPD port organisation proved itself as the leading force of the leading trade union in St Petersburg. When reviewing the local organisational networks one soon realises that there is no solid space for further contact, and most active, non-traditional trade unions remain at the stage of forms either like that of train drivers or that of the dockers.¹³⁰ In addition, we could easily notice that the superior leadership of their trade unions did not provide regular organisational support in either case. In both cases the presidents of the regional (local) union organisations were elected as deputy presidents of their trade unions at the national level, but the posts had little meaning within their organisational work. As a consequence, the port committee actually presented itself as the local headquarters, or indeed the only headquarters of the members.

It is then clear that either the one-depot-one-union pattern or the well-coordinated pattern of workplace unionism reveal the fact that neither an effective strategy nor leadership play the decisive role; it is rather defined by the character of the social relations of production at the enterprise. If the obstacle to the transformations of Russian labour relations derived from the alienated workplace relations ­– which Clarke (1996) and Ashwin (1999) described as ‘alienated collectivism’ – not only for those traditional labour-management relations but also for those which have broken with paternalist relations, the answer might have been shown in the case of the once ‘militant’ miners and also that of the St Petersburg dockers. The interrelation between the workers’ collective identity and their trade union organisations reveals the contradiction within the process of self-organisation. Behind all the successful campaigns, the coordination, the reformed leadership, it is fairly questionable that the ‘positive’ case - the dockers – has achieved fundamental change to their union organisational work under their practice of workplace trade unionism. The more critical matter is that even if they were aware of the necessity of uniting beyond the limits of the workplace, their real practice did not go as they perceived. The expectation that these workers would play a pioneer role, not surprisingly, must face meaningful doubt over the prospects of Russian labour relations: the mobilised workers and their organisation present an isolated exception rather than a pioneer model. Noteworthily, so many claims and attempts for a broader unity continually appeared across the region, but most solidarity attempts simply failed or appeared in a symbolic way.

The comparative analysis of the formation of these two alternative trade union organisations presents an evident clarification of the inadequacy of an explanation emphasising subjective conditions over organisational forms. As a result this thesis integrates the details and process of Russian workers’ collective self-organisation, and on this basis provides an effective account of the way in which independent trade unions in Russia developed at the enterprise level and made their own achievements.

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