Shih-Hao Kang a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology
Labour organisations in St Petersburg
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- 1.4.1 Who are the trade union activists
- 1.4.2 Free / alternative union organisations
- 1.4.3 The FNPR member organisations
- 1.4.4 Individual-based coordination and solidarity
- 1.4.5 Into the case study stage
1.4 Labour organisations in St PetersburgOnce the design of applying the method of participant observation for this research was set up, I started to establish access and contacts with the local labour activists’ circle in St Petersburg. The experiences and the approaching process not only helped me to learn the solution to understanding the local labour network, but also confirmed the earlier consideration of the weakness of information based on interviewing union leaders or analysing second-hand materials. Among all the contact individuals and groups, the similar reputation of both alternative organisations of the local railway workers and dockers turned out to contain interesting and comparable aspects for the case study, granted by the situation of the local labour movement in St Petersburg. The two union organisations both act as alternative trade union organisations in the transport sector, and also had been member organisations of the Confederation of Labour. In this section I present a brief introduction on the recent state of the labour movement in St Petersburg during the past decade. This short description helps to capture the scene and character of the local labour activity network, and thereby to incorporate my methodological review to confirm the value of observing the two selected case-studies of this study. The resources of this introduction are partly based on secondary materials, partly based on my own interviews conducted with a number of well-known labour activists who had participated in strike events or organizational affairs during the past decade. 1.4.1 Who are the trade union activists?My first visit to St Petersburg was in the summer of 1997, which was the time of a wave of strikes and protests across Russia as the worsening situation of the national economy and industries was widely reported. Before visiting the country, I had in my mind some naïve illusions about the society of the former Soviet Union, in which some primitive, simple pictures about local workers’ activities had come earlier from studying the literature of the early 1990s. According to the report of the Russian scholar Temkina (1992), the early 90s was a peak time for establishing labour organisations, and the atmosphere of the labour movement had gained a high perspective. On this first visit, I saw a dozen elderly people standing in front of Gostiny Dvor (the city’s best-known shopping complex) with the ‘sickle and hammer’ flags. As a citizen from the strongly anti-communist Formosa island, I was quite impressed by such a scenario, and soon imagined that some Russian people ‘still’ retain a tradition of calling for a ‘workers’ state’. I talked to one of the meeting participants, Professor Popov, a well-known figure from the local left-wing circle, who introduced himself and agreed to talk more about the situation of the workers’ movement in Russia. The message from his holding a ‘workers’ academy’ showed me the first clue about the local labour movement. The next summer I went to Piter again and arranged a longer stay. This was a time full of political rumours and fears for economical chaos to follow. On 7 October 1998, the Day of All-Russian Action called by the FNPR-led organisations, I went to observe the demonstration and then believed that, though a bit boring, it was quite a big and meaningful event within the Russian labour movement. At the end of the demonstration, I met one left-wing group; one of these protesters told me he was from a local labour organisation – ‘Nezavisimost’’ (The Independence) – a trade union organisation I had read about in the literatures about the new Russian labour movement mentioned earlier. Meeting this person was my first contact with a local labour activist, and since then I received more possibilities to make regular contact with local activists and union functionaries. I was confident that this was a successful beginning to catch the development of the local labour movement for this thesis. Only later on, I gradually realised that the real situation of the ever gloomy labour movement in Piter has changed much more even than many observers may expect. When I came to St Petersburg at the end of 2001 with the aim of collecting case-study information, I realised the previous contact provided little support. After the meetings and interviews with local union activists, I felt that I met many heroic individuals but did not receive information about where the ‘active labour organisations’ were. The first active labour (social) organisation I received access to observe was the Committee of United Action for Social and Labour Rights (KED). With the aim of action coordination in the city, the KED was formed to present a new labour organisation for conducting resistance campaigns at local level. The initiative to set up this Organizing Committee appeared in the solidarity conference with the struggle of workers of the Vyborg Pulp and Paper Mill (VTsBK), which took place on November 26-27, 1999. The Organizing Committee included representatives of trade unions and public organizations and deputies of local parliaments of the St Petersburg city and Leningrad region. All the parties and unions represented stood on different ideological and political positions and often feuded with each other. Leaders of several alternative trade unions and FNPR trade unions were also among the participants. What kept the movement together was the resistance to the government draft of the new Labour Code and the focus of united actions, such as the all-Russia protest action held on May 17 of 2000 against the first attempt by the Putin-Kas’yanov government to force the new Labour Code through Parliament. Despite the continuous attempts to divide this campaign, the Organizing Committee as a whole and all its co-chairmen (Artyukhin, Vedernikova, and Kozlov) made efforts to unite all opponents of the government’s draft Labour Code and to make agitation with materials understandable to the broad masses.35 Its members produced and distributed leaflets and newspapers explaining the threat of the government’s draft Labour Code to workers and their unions. During their campaign, the committee carried out dozens of picket lines and several meetings were held in St Petersburg. One of their three chairpersons, Таmаrа Vedernikova, an active member of the Russian Communist Workers’ Party (RKRP), who was the chairperson of the trade union committee of the Leningrad Colour Printing Complex (KTsP) at the time. She participated in the solidarity group with the famous Vyborg strike event of 1999-2000 and decided to form the KED.36 The way of for the Committee work to require participants to present issues for the meeting to share and discuss. The discussions of the committee rarely covered trade union work. Apart from the attendance of trade union leaders, the Organizing Committee concentrated on conducting public campaigns rather than making efforts at union agitation or mobilisation of the union members. The organisers did try to make meetings with trade union activists though, and they also expected to agitate more ordinary workers to join the Organizing Committee. Nevertheless, most of the meetings only had a low level of participation. The activists who worked within the Organizing Committee tried to provide good, friendly teamwork, but there was rarely any cooperation with other local alternative labour organisations. With their 20 or more regular individual participants, the Committee was more a loose labour-social forum than an organised labour organization.37 Nevertheless, since its establishment, the organisation did have a coordinating role among left-oriented trade unionists; and its regular participants were active in participating in pickets and labour protests.
Moreover, even the most important unity of local free trade unions, the St Petersburg and Leningrad Region Confederation of Labour (KT SPb i LO), founded on 8 July 1995 by a cluster of local free trade union organisations, which had grown up to 24 member organisations with about 10 thousand union members by 1998, was in a fierce struggle for survival. After a serious internal conflict over control of the leadership in the autumn of 1998, the regional branch had almost ceased all activities lately. Over its limited period of activism, the organisation helped to establish several new trade unions across the region; and provided a ‘Round Table’ forum for initiators and organisers from free trade unions to exchange information and experiences since February 1997. The subsequent fate of KT SPb, nonetheless, shared the same fortune of acting for only a short time as did other local labour organisations. According to the assessment of local trade-union activists, despite its formal presence the Confederation only played an active role for a very limited period. The reason why it has almost disappeared over recent years is quite controversial; it seems that both internal conflicts and insufficient support from its member trade union organisations were the main factors. For example, the relatively strong alternative trade union organisations such as the unions of aviation workers (FPAD) or seamen (RPSM) rarely participated in local solidarity actions or networks. The development of KT SPb activities, as well as the history of the senior level of the Russian alternative trade unions, revealed the problem of the weak ability of local / primary trade union organisations. To capture the dynamic of local alternative union organisations, one probably needs to note the role of fund and resource providers – the representative centre of the American trade unions. From the early 90s until the end of 2002, the American trade union association, AFL-CIO, had provided the main sponsorship to local union activists and organisations by providing funds for a few well-paid posts (compared to Russian workers’ average wages). The fund supported the free Russian trade unions to have full-time staff, together with activity funds and information materials (such as publication of relevant materials over Russian labour laws). The aim was to establish ties with the activities of local free trade unions. The sponsorship did achieve something by setting up coordinators at local level. Nevertheless, the sponsorship also caused some of these coordinators to become distant from their members and be authoritarian in conducting union activities. When the American side decided to reduce funding in the late 90s, the funding for the alternative unions was withdrawn, but the local legal consultation centre Egida (the St Petersburg branch of AFL-CIO sponsored Solidarinost’ until the end of 2003), still received material support from it. The ‘Round Table’ forum was therefore held by the Centre to retain the basic link among activists from the free trade unions. The fund was totally abolished in 2002, and the Centre arranged to receive material support from local FNPR organisations (LFP) for its routine functions. The ‘Round Table’ meeting and the legal consultation service are still maintained for free trade unions. Key organisers of the meeting had also convinced the director of Egida to transform its ‘Round Table’ meeting into preparation for future solidarity organisation and campaigns (Round Table meeting October 10, 2004). 1.4.3 The FNPR member organisationsAs the regional organisation of FNPR in St Petersburg and Leningrad Region, Federation of St Petersburg and Leningrad Region Trade Unions (LFP) embraces 43 member union organisations (including territorial-industrial and individual enterprise ones), claiming a membership of about 1 million (in 2001). The centre of the Federation has 44 paid staff, but most of them are economists and legal consultants. As Ashwin and Clarke (2002, p.189) have revealed, ‘Individual cases take up a great deal of the time of the regional trade union organisations’ lawyers’. The organisational structure and the staff structure provide little opportunity to assign specific activists to represent LFP in any concrete labour dispute. Apart from simply depending on the chairperson of the primary organisation (such as the union committee or shop committee) to deal with the campaign, the consultation and the estimation of strategy for their own workplace actions, the territorial organisation of FNPR provided little support. As a female chairperson of a trade union committee affiliated with LFP expressed, ‘The conference meeting issued sharp criticism of the economic and social policy. But, it never had a concrete plan and action to tackle the problems’ (TamaraB, January 28, 2003). In those exceptional cases of local labour disputes at enterprise level (such as the dispute of Vyborg Pulp and Paper Mill Faction in 1999 or the strike of Ford workers) where the Federation had been involved, the Federation normally just held a press conference to show their moral position and left its member organisations to take their own stand. According to its official declaration, the Federation gives positive recognition to the application of social partnership, and that merely means the conclusion of sectoral tariff agreements, territorial agreements, and collective agreements. The Federation claims to have concluded the first tripartite agreement in Russia, together with local government and the local employers’ association, back in 1991. Regarding LFP’s activities toward the difficulties of their members’ social and working standards, it is easy to understand that the organisation relies on holding ceremonial-type demonstrations or voicing their concern about the implementation of regional social programmes. According to its released information, in the face of conditions of conflict with employers or the authorities, the Federation organizes protest actions, pickets, will carry out demonstrations and meetings, using a wide set of means of pressure upon the social partners within the framework of the legislation and the Charter. The largest protest actions, like All-Russian Days of Action, have taken place almost every year. Apart from these mass actions, the Federation has always been the main organiser of the traditional Mayday demonstration and rallies, when they did mobilise their members, but without serious demands. Thereby, their participants just need to show up at the rally or meeting. Apart from these kinds of demonstrations, it is difficult to find their activists participating in any kind of industrial dispute around the city. The most decisive feature for assessing such a demonstration is to register the routine of listening to the speeches, passing the resolution, so logically and finally the participants can go home. Apart from the traditional Mayday parade, LFP did organise a few special actions in the city. One of these few events was the campaign against the Labour Code draft of the Kas’yanov government. The Council of LFP demanded that member organisations should mobilise and be ready for union propaganda actions. Leaflets were handed out for one hour at nine city Metro stations. The mass protest action was set for 14 December 2000. According to local analysts, the meeting turned out to be a relatively successful mobilisation for the first time in the history of LFP. About 10 thousand workers attended the protest. Many of them were called by their own enterprise union organisations but not by the territorial committees of the trade unions. Despite those few and unique occasions where we see the potential of the FNPR union organisations to participate in actions, as regarding its positions toward these events we see little more than rhetoric and symbolic activism from LFP. As mentioned earlier, the Federation does not have a specific section or activists to take part in the resolution of local labour disputes or industrial actions. At the enterprise level, however, if a new-style or militant president of the union committee who is determined to defend and serve its members’ interest is elected, these union leaders are more active in participating in the circle of local labour struggles. Interestingly, these union leaders quite often turned out to keep close contact with local militant communists and leftists (just like the case in the formation of KED) while staying with the LFP. These people chose to keep their union organisation under the FNPR structure while openly denouncing the incompetence of their senior FNPR leadership at the same time. In addition, these activists do not mind having contacts or even coordinating their activity with alternative trade union activists. 1.4.4 Individual-based coordination and solidaritySince my first contact with a local labour group in 2002, I spent almost all the first year observing the general conditions of local labour organisation and checking what I had heard previously. Through realising the situation of local trade union networks, one important fact emerged to note: there were few channels for local activists to meet and coordinate their activities. The scenario is not difficult to define: those relatively famous and well-resourced trade union organisations, such as the St Petersburg organisations of FPAD or RPD, seemed to have little interest in extending their own organisational base.38 Although these unions did support the idea of forming new confederations, so did participate in several nationwide actions, these local organisations paid little attention to the campaigns of other local union organisations. Most solidarity campaigns are deeply embedded on an individual basis, which means trade union leaders were not able to mobilise their members to attend the campaign. Ordinary workers knew little or nothing about such solidarity support as did occur. Union leaders usually claimed that the members were not interested in taking part in any concrete struggles, and the campaigns very often made their appeals to the ‘public’ instead of to their own members. We can easily find out that most appeals of these pioneer organisations were eventually ignored by the mass they wanted to appeal to. Such facts indicate how much these relatively stronger organisations were interested in making coordinating and solidaristic campaigns with their ‘minor brothers’. From ‘Kirovskii zavod’, ‘Arsenal’, ‘Leningradskii metall zavod (LMZ)’ to TEK (Fuel-Energy Complex of St Petersburg), all have their own interesting struggle stories and traditions, but again, most of them are simply active on their own. Those rarely seen solidarity campaigns, like the agreement of the trade union committees of VTsBK, LMZ, KTsP (Kombinat Tsvetnoi Pechati, Leningrad Colour Printing Complex) for solidarity action in 1999, did take place though. The miserable history of KT SPb reveals their strength had never provoked great moves to form or empower any influential organisation. During my observation period, the only exception was their support to Egida - the local-based legal consultation centre. Normally, the invitation to a round-table meeting or seminar which were to share their experiences and to monitor the critical changes in Russian labour law, so that had attracted local activist to such kind of local networks of union groups. Corresponding to these conditions, for those ‘alternative’ union organisations outside the huge but inactive LFP, the only dynamic of the union movement around the region has constantly fallen on the circulation of reforming loose, forum-style union connections, composed of clusters of union activists. One of the important observations is that we cannot simply divide the free trade unions and the FNPR member organisations into two sides. Their trade unionists did sometimes coordinate to reach some common perspectives, although they still employ those general estimations of rich-but-inactive FNPR and active-but-tiny free trade unions; and the free trade unions actually differed in their positions on the political spectrum, so that we have to consider their cooperation was never taken for granted. The capacity of most so-called free trade unions is still weak but the leaders are rather reluctant to mobilise their own members to participate in their activities. Most of their plans for collective actions did not take place in the form of industrial actions. One of the most frequent things heard from them is their feeling of disappointment at their own fellow workers. Yet, instead of making an effort to strengthen their influence on the majority of their workers and members, most of their activities were set up directly to appeal to the public. The scenario of the upper level of the trade unions not only reflected the ability of various local primary trade union organisations, but also revealed their problematic strategy. Quite interestingly, those practical issues such as the way they act, the forms of their coordination, or their rare experiences of how to make a successful campaign or organisation were rarely discussed. Apart from that, the meetings were frequently attended by people who carelessly declared that they are trade union activists or labour activists, while some others simply participated to present their opinions about the problem of Russian trade unions. There is another impressive finding: in various analyses, the passivity of ordinary workers in the face of potential conflict at work or their subordination to enterprise paternalism is often mentioned; such a factor is then connected to the reluctance of Russian workers to change the methods of their trade union organisations which simply stand on the side of the administration (management). Nevertheless, such a precondition seems hardly to be a general case during my primary observations. In many cases workers did accuse those union bodies which did not carry out their duties to protect the interest of their members; then decided to support the appeal of a new organisation. Another fact within such a dynamic is that these cases are always either isolated or frail; and local trade union organizations are so ineffective whether in reaching their activities or the practice of their strategies. This initial fieldwork generated three questions: firstly, how the union activists of my case studies dealt with the immediate request from their members; secondly, how local activists coordinated their duties; thirdly, in what ways did those confederations and federations matter and why did these initiators decided to make a solidarity network? Finally, there is a most serious question to answer: why at this stage of the Russian labour movement did a discontinuity always appear between the senior trade union leaders and their member trade unions?
During the first step of collecting information for the background understanding I noticed that among those activist I had met, a handful of railway workers, members of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of October Railway (KSP OZhD), were relatively more active than other local union activists. Many other local unions were normally represented by only one person－the chairperson of the union committee. Fortunately, I met these railway union activists at the period when they were heading the campaign against privatisation. Compared to other Russian railway routes, where workers might only have the traditional ROSPROFZhEL organisation or occasionally an organisation of the Russian Trade Union of Locomotive Brigades of Railway Workers (RPLBZh), the presence of these activists made October Railway unique; in October Railway there were several trade union organisations, which makes the features of labour relations in October Railway possibly different. For my research investigation, this case provides me with the opportunity to set up observation of the members and activists of KSP OZhD, the Territorial Organisation of RPLBZh of October Railway (TO RPLBZh OZhD) and the Trade Union of the Electricians of October Railway (PSE OZhD). More importantly, I could deliberately study how the coordination among these organisations had been applied. That was why the October railway workers and their organisations (KSP OZhD) were taken as the subject of my first set of case studies. Once I had reached participant access to them, many materials were rapidly collected. The first case reminded me of the gulf between the ‘original imagination’ and the reality. The union organisations in my first case study were always full of quarrels, but there was no detailed discussion of improving organisational skills or how to develop their basic mobilisation ability. Different trade unions did not respect each other. Many activists were sacked or constantly faced the threat of sacking. While the field work on the local railway workers almost came to an end in 2003, the labour disputes at St Petersburg Seaport had attracted more attention among local labour activists. Again, benefiting from my established access to the local union circle, the activists from St Petersburg Port Committee of the Russian Trade Union of Dockers finally agreed to receive my regular visits.40 The barriers to conducting observation in the port were much more than expected, especially compared to that of the first railway worker case study. Firstly, it has always been difficult to enter into their buildings, due to the tight security checking system. Secondly, the trade union organisation is very stable, holding basic resources and full-time union staff; most of them enjoy high support from their members. The activists were therefore not as eager to attract attention from outsiders as were the activists of the (independent) railway union organisations. Within the Russian trade union movement, the FNPR trade union would attract a minor role in this study. It is not difficult to realise that ROSPROFZhEL has been a typical FNPR-style trade union. Except for those traditional events of soviet-time union functions, there is no real connection between the members and the union organisations. Therefore I have to put alternative union organisations as the main object of my investigation. For the research design, the two local alternative union organisations, railway workers and dockers’, embrace meaningful aspects to make a comparison. Firstly, both organisations aim to represent certain categories of workers from the Russian transport sector, embracing an emphasis on brigade work. Secondly, both organisations have their common connection in the local trade union movement in St Petersburg. The conditions of the two trade unions, however, have encountered critical differences, and the patterns of the organisations, found to develop their own specific practice, differ. By and large, both the similarity and common background and the division and characteristics of the relations between the union and the members have provided more detailed insight for our study of the transformation of the Russian labour movement. Directory: russia russia -> 852 The year when the timeline of the Primary Chronicle starts russia -> Airborne Troops (vdv) russia -> To me this is all the cards I would read (if necessary) in my 2nc russia -> Syllabus form russia -> Russian, us military planes in near miss over Syria russia -> 10: 00am–5: 00pm Participant List russia -> Russia’s Strategy in the Arctic: Cooperation, not confrontation Download 2.45 Mb. Share with your friends:
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