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

3.1.2 Daily activities of the primary organisations

According to the initiators, the organisation was firstly established as a new and free trade union in the depot in 1994, which immediately gained the support of the majority of the depot workers. One year later, in 1995, the trade union passed a motion to join RPLBZh and only then did they become one of the RPLBZh local organisations. The union committee is located at Moscow Station, St Petersburg. Most members work on the passenger routes to different destinations. Quite impressively, there are quite a high proportion of young members at this depot. The average age of the members was quite young, the majority of them were in their forties, and many of them were just in their thirties or even younger. The number of its members was seriously affected by two events. The first shock came during and after the 1998 strike, when the primary organisation lost more than half of its original members. It had 102 members before the strike action, but more than half left afterwards. The second shock came in 1999, when the depot was divided into two separate parts, and the workers of the maintenance section were relocated to another administrative unit. The primary organisation has been striving gradually to recover from its low point (continuous fall down to 44 in 2003); depot TCh-8 in 2004 had about 60 members (out of about 350 workers).

The membership due is flexible, it cannot be less than 1% of their wages, but is usually 2%. Usually their members choose to pay personally by hand, although here it is also possible to collect dues by check-off. Their experience has taught them that such an approach can easily be used as a threat by the administration. Although the activists are confident of the loyalty of their members to the independent union, it was still regularly seen that most members did not pay much attention to the formal union meetings. The general meeting of the union organisation provides a clear sign of the members’ passive attitude to common issues, since it is not possible to hold the meeting regularly because the union has rarely been successful in mobilising the attendance of its members. The weakness of conducting meetings, anyhow, did not really bother the activists. They are confident that if there is a serious issue they can still match the quorum required by the union charter. One way of securing that is to arrange for members to pay their union dues on the date of the meeting.

The primary organisation at depot TCh-8 does not have any full-time staff. The union committee depends on the chairperson and his deputy to conduct the activity of the organisation. They together are also in charge of the labour inspection and have the authority of conducting the examination process which qualifies drivers to fulfil their duties. Most of the time, it is the deputy who sits in the office and is available for their members’ consultations. The current chairperson of the union committee, Andrei Gavrilov, has worked on the October Railway for almost 30 years and has the qualification of train driver first class. He joined RPLBZh in 1998, and was elected chairperson shortly after. In October 1999, he was elected to the Executive Committee of RPLBZh and has been deputy president since then. According to Gavrilov, the reason he did not think about joining RPLBZh before 1998 was that he did not really like the union’s political position (he was rather close to the left wing). When he saw that RPLBZh was no longer so close to the so-called ‘democratic’ or ‘liberal’ politicians, he finally decided to join it. In August 1998, he participated in the strike, just like many others, but he was suspended without pay (prostoi) by the administration for about a year after the strike ended as a punishment. As soon as he was restored to his original post as an electric locomotive driver in July 1999, he was elected chairperson of the union committee. Most organisational work relies on the chairperson his deputy, especially the deputy. They usually cooperate with other RPLBZh committees and Egida.

The condition and environment of the union committee’s office have several interesting features to note. The trade union committee of TCh-8 occupies one corner of the building of a conference hall within the depot territory, some distance from the ROSPROFZhEL office and the administration building. The building is located in an open square and beside the most important access which many railway workers must pass by day to day. The window of the office of the union committee opens on to the access, and performs an effective function of assisting their social communication (they even post the union mark on this window).⁷⁹ Such a location allows most workers, especially RPLBZh members, to visit the office and have a short talk without being seen by administration staff. Young members often visit this union office. They visit for a chat, for relevant requests, or to take a piece of buterbrod (Russian sandwich) with vodka to have fun with the lads. At least ten people come and go every day, which gives the committee an active atmosphere. The office of the union committee therefore provides not only for union activity but also serves as a basic space for engine drivers’ social life. Such a condition became one of the main methods for the activists to spread new union information, and that is even the easiest way since the activists always believe that the workers, especially non-members, do not care what they put on the list to negotiate with the management. For all these reasons, including its location convenience most TO RPLBZh meetings are held here. However, such function can be provided only when one of the two activists is off work and come to ‘open’ the normally lucked office.
Primary organisation RPLBZh TCh-12

This organisation embraces most members working at the Finland Station, St Petersburg. The union organisation was formed in 1992 together with the formation of RPLBZh. It has the oldest tradition of the local RPLBZh primary organisations as well as in local union movement circles. Based on such a history, the office of its union committee was also the centre and the office of the territorial committee until 2000. Under the influence of Zamyatin, the union committee still keeps a decently organised office. Under its relatively strong tradition which was handed down by the previous TO president, the primary organisation once embraced 90 % of the depot work force. However, the primary organisation also suffered after the 1998 strike and has never recovered since. The organisation had about 10 % members (40) out of the 350 drivers at this depot in 2003. The chairperson explained the minor membership and is that under the influence of ROSPROFZhEL activity as such,

‘Actually, most workers did not care about joining or not joining the trade union at all; those who join ROSPROFZhEL are those who simply need to show the administration they are on their side. In addition, the administration and ROSPROFZhEL cooperate with each other to take advantage of new driver recruitment, they just give the newcomers a registration form to fill for joining ROSPROFZhEL right away’.(Arkardi Komissarov, March 23, 2007)

Just like the condition in TCh-8, the union committee does not have any full-time staff. The current chairperson, Komissarov, has worked as a driver’s assistant since 1980. He had constantly struggled with the administration over the order to sack him after the strike action and was once officially sacked in 2000. During the court process many union events therefore were shared and carried out together with his deputy who participated in most external activities. The first deputy chairperson, Rorgankov, is not a train driver or assistant currently, but has joined the union long ago. Although he was more active in participating in union activities, he did not have a very positive faith in the relations between the committee and their members. He argued that all the difficulties that Russian society has faced derive from their cultural and also religious traditions. This attitude was not agreed to by Komissarov who, on the contrary, believed that the only task of a union activist is to make all efforts to explain the union’s work well so that the workers can be attracted to it. Anyhow, when discussing how to attract members at least to show up at their meeting, this activist said there are of course some simple ways. For example, when it was time to call a general meeting, they had tried several times to inform members that there will be beer after the meeting in order to encourage them to attend the meeting so that they can ensure that the meeting achieves a quorum.

Unlike the union committee of TCh-8 that benefits from an office located on an open square, the condition of the RPLBZh union committee of Depot TCh-12 was quite different. Its office was located within the building of the depot administration, and right next to the office of the ROSPROFZhEL union committee. This makes them more cautious in questions like how to communicate with their ‘big competitor’ and how to arrange their particular relations with the depot administration as well. The relationship between the activists of the two competing organisations was described as tense but peaceful. There was merely personal greeting among them. Their members or non-members would face more pressure when visiting the committee office. For such considerations, at TCh-12, union information or bulletins rather rely on an information board in the hall, side by side with that of ROSPROFZhEL. With its relatively close atmosphere, the office is bigger and better furnished than those of their counterparts. In the union office there are television and radio, with clear information about the union’s current affairs on the wall. While the union committee is no longer as active as before, the place seems to serve as a rest space for activists and visitors. Interestingly, despite their similar functional settings, the union committee did not have such computer equipment as at the TCh-8 office. The TCh-12 union committee only replaced its rather old computer equipment very recently. Things here looked really quite different from at TCh-8. It was easy to feel which organisation was the more active.

To compare the style of daily work with that of the union committee of Depot TCh-8, I asked about their differences. During several open conversations, the deputy chairperson gave a typical response about why they have actually become tired of encouraging their colleagues to join their union.

‘You asked me why I said I feel tired. Nowadays I have got tired of appealing to our workers to defend their own rights. What I want is to respect myself, and this is the way I hope everyone would behave. If they respect themselves then our union of course will be able to make more changes’ (AndreiR, May 27, 2003).

Another time, he commented when his close colleague had just said that he does not need ‘a union’.

‘Our workers don’t understand what concretely they can receive from joining the union. They just get used to setting their troubles aside. But I do know what is good since I joined the union, now I can think, read and use the articles of the labour law; I have learned how to protect my own job. This is good enough for me!’(AndreiR, June 02, 2003)

One another occasion, he gave a more passive opinion while we were discussing whether it is true that the majority of workers still belong to ROSPROFZhEL because they think at least they can receive a ‘putevka.’

‘I don’t think the need for a putevka matters, and there is no big competition between our organisation and ROSPROFZhEL… Because our workers are going nowhere. Most people go neither to our union nor to ROSPROFZhEL. They are not ready for it. And they are just waiting.’ (AndreiR, June 27, 2003)
Primary organisation RPLBZh TCh-20

This primary organisation was established in 1994 at the motor-car depot TCh-20. The depot is near to TCh-12, both within the Finland Station, and at the beginning the two union committees had been closely associated with each other. Recently, the primary organisation has had only seven members out of the total 600-700 workers at the depot. Again, that was a decline, from 20 to the current number, as an aftermath of the 1998 strike. The current chairperson, Teryushkov, has worked as a driving assistant since 1981. Similar to what has happened to the activists in TCh-12, he has been involved in RPLBZh circles for quite a long time, but lately expressed no will to be as active as he was in the past. The daily work of the union committee relied on the chairperson who acts like an elder brother to take care of this primary organisation. Apart from the chairperson, there was once a young organiser active at this depot, but he was soon sacked and went to another depot. Despite the close association with the TCh-12 union committee, the RPLBZh union committee at this depot faced a more hostile attitude of the depot administration, which refused to provide an office and equipment and would not recognise the legitimacy of the union committee. The union committee finally received its office only in October 2002 after they won the case on the court.⁸⁰ Nevertheless, the lately received office for the union committee did not represent a meaningful role. As activists complained, the place was inconvenient, due to the fact that it was actually a place painters used as a workshop, so members did not like to use it.

Apart from the four core cells of the RPLBZh primary union organisations on the October Railway, the primary organisation of RPLBZh at depot TCh-21, located in Volkhov city, Leningrad Region, has the strongest membership with about 200 members out of a total of 687 workers at this depot in 2005, although the number was double this before the 1998 strike. The primary organisation was formally founded in February 1997, during the time when the wage arrears problem had caused grievances in the city (railway employment was one of the main local employment providers), and almost half the drivers joined the RPLBZh union. The RPLBZh union committee here was immediately recognised to negotiate with the depot administration for the collective agreement during 1997-1998. The primary organisation also got an office and a working phone. Its good fortune, however, did not last long, since the administration has always been trying to eliminate its trade union committee. The union committee actively participated and successfully mobilised all its fellow workers to join the strike, together with the members, in August 1998. Although the aftermath of the strike also had a great impact on the union organisation, the union committee survived and its office and all facilities have luckily not been removed by the depot administration.

The chairperson, Kharitonov, was a senior assistant driver. He has been elected as one of the deputy presidents of RPLBZh since 1999. For its strong membership base, the chairperson was able to become a full-time union activist. Nevertheless, his style of running union activity is quite different from that of his comrades. That is partly because the depot is isolated and remotely located, far away from St Petersburg; and partly because he quite enjoyed his authority at the depot, rather than being active in promoting or coordinating his activity with other primary organisations. The same reason has left his committee rather isolated from their St Petersburg counterparts. One should note that the resource of employing legal consultation is not as available as it is in the City, which means that for the style of an activist’s daily work to be the same as at its counterparts is unlikely. More than this, his late political interest and activity made him more distant from the RPLBZh headquarters.⁸¹

The rest of the primary organisations, not presented in detail above, faced a more difficult situation at their depots. At these depots the union activists simply acknowledged that it was difficult to survive as a normal union organisation, and they could only keep a low profile (individual member contact). Some of them were eliminated or simply disappeared. To take one example, the story of the union committee at TCh-22 presents a most dramatic scene. The union organisation was formed just before the 1998 strike, and in total 120 out of the 170 drivers joined the organisation and also participated in the later strike action. After the strike, most participants were punished by the administration which put them on administrative leave so that they received very little payment. Such a punishment was more powerful to the local drivers because the economic and employment character of the local town meant that workers subjected to such pressure could not easily find a temporary income while they waited for a court decision as others did in a big city like St Petersburg, and most union members finally left the depot in the next years. Seeing the life difficulties of union members, even the chairperson, Anton Serov, suggested that the members should take any chance to leave the depot. As in his words, he said ‘In fact, that was me told our members, our colleagues to run, run away from the mess as soon as possible’(September 9, 2003). For himself, the case has been appealed and appealed again for 5 years, but finally he still lost the case. During this period he could only try to earn money by different methods. The long-running court procedure, certainly, reinforced the members’ fear as well as their lack of confidence in the protection from RPLBZh. The aftermath was then understandable to activists: the primary organisation had more or less disappeared and the chairperson, even though he resisted the fact for a while, finally gave up his militant spirit and returned to a normal life. The financial difficulty of his family pushed him to leave the union behind. According to the most recent information, he has started to work as a fire fighter in his local town.

3.1.3 The resource variation: relation with the administration and workers

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the work schedule makes it difficult for drivers to meet or socialize, and there is no customary culture for them to make social contact after work. The communication among train drivers seems very casual, since their work schedules are so tight. And just like other ordinary drivers, the current wage level means that these people can hardly afford to go to a café or bistro so that their lives are kept in touch. Such a living precondition made difficulties for union activists to spread their message. For these activists, a lack of union office means no work telephone, no copy machine so that it is very inconvenient (and costly) just to rely on personal contact. As one activist explained, the only way he could do it was by walking around the depots and chatting to people he met casually. Furthermore, making distant phone calls to reach remote depots has been a quite problematic expense for them. A union office at least can provide basic resources to meet these functions, not only because it can make efficient (free) connection but also be the place where the workers have some chat or keep social life either before or off the duty. Furthermore, they are able to discuss their solutions to work problems, to discuss the progress of court cases. That is in total for activists to receive various enquiries from members and workers. However, since there is no full-time union staff, and the entrance key can only be kept by the very core activists, most union committee offices could keep open to receive members only when their individual activists come in. The relative convenience of using the union office at TCh-8 doubtlessly indicates one reason why it is now the ‘core’ organisation. Despite the primary organisation TCh-21 having the biggest membership basis among all RPD primary organisations, and the union committee having received certain resources and authority, its geographic inconvenience allowed the weaker TCh-8 union committee (Moscow Station is located in the very centre of the city of St Petersburg) to provide the central coordination role. This fact reflects the practical challenge to their internal organisational work.

It is also noteworthy that, although the credit of each organisation and the proportion of RPLBZh membership can give them relative authority, personal relationships with the administration are somewhat decisive, partly due to the tradition of interaction with the administration, and partly due to the various forms of committee activity. By that we can see the union organisations are treated differently. Take the environment of the union committee office as an example, which shows how the conditions were individualised and thus the primary organisation has to deal with the power balance in their relations with the depot administration and their access to members or workers. Such a balance sometimes does not depend on the size of the union membership. For example, the first deputy chairperson of the union committee at TCh-12, a locomotive mechanic, is the only member of RPLBZh in his small, isolated depot, but a visible information board of RPLBZh is allowed by the administration to hang on the wall of the workplace. The reason for this might be the fact that he is sometimes in charge of the management of shift work. In short, the environment eventually reflects the relations of the primary organisation with both the administration and the members. If we did not know that the regional public prosecutor for transport had once tried to ban the existence of an RPLBZh organisation on the October Railway, we might think that RPLBZh has a monopoly at such a depot. The history of non-RPLBZh unions which did not receive an office for their activities (the detail is presented in the next section) simply shows that such rare cases were very fortuitous and might happen only when the administration (or ROSPROFZhEL organisation) closes one eye to their activity.

3.1.4 Organisational work of TO RPLBZh OZhD

According to the official document of TO RPLBZh, ‘when the primary organisations were established in the early 1990s, RPLBZh activists could take advantage of the administration’s inexperience on court affairs’ (Gudosha’, No.1 (2), 1997, pp.1-2). The union organisation therefore has spent an enormous amount of time taking conflicts with their administrations to court. Three basic categories of these cases include: the union’s status and funds; violation of individual worker’s rights; and victimisation of leaders and activists. By and large, the activity of taking legal cases to defend members’ interests or resolve their conflict with the administration has formally become the greatest achievement of the RPLBZh organisations, although many of these cases were quite time-consuming; most cases took 2-3 years to gain what they wanted.

In face of the daily difficulties created by the pressure and the discrimination of the railway administration, the RPLBZh organisation allows workers from one depot to join the primary organisation of another depot. Nevertheless, such a solution does not mean that the destination union committee can subsequently protect these members more easily and with less effort. Theoretically, the union committee is able to issue an official document on behalf of any member to the administration at that member’s workplace. In real practice, however, members actually think such a kind of action may subject them to more victimization. In other words, they still may need to confront the administration personally and so they have to be quite ready to bear the hardship anyway. Such a dilemma has remained as a critical weakness in the daily work of the union, since the real function of the union can be little more than providing legal consultation. Except for the very loyal members, workers staying with those weak organisations sooner or later have to give up their support for RPLBZh organisations.

As time went on, the core RPLBZh union activists were enlightened or empowered by learning labour laws and practicing their skills in the courts. This has become the most frequently mentioned achievement of union work. The first lesson an activist would like to show and teach new members is how to defend their rights by quoting relevant labour laws. These activists firstly help and explain to the person how to write a ‘meaningful’ document (such as an application, personal statement and so on) in support of the person’s position regarding the events. Or, in a case which the activists do not know how to deal with, especially related to legal interpretation, then they bring the case to the union’s legal consultation agency (Egida). Nonetheless, the TO did not have any full-time staff to take charge of these cases (at least over the research observation period from 2002 to 2004), and it was said that the situation had been like this for several years. These daily routines still rely on the same people who were originally inspired to take up this duty and to undertake it voluntarily. The whole union daily routine and organisational work therefore relies either on those who can come into the office before or after their own working shift or even those who have been sacked (like the worker mentioned in the last chapter who had once lost his railway job in TCh-20) to take such unpaid duties. Without a real stable environment and access to mass support, such well-learned activists sometimes ended up working on their own, while ignoring others who were not as experienced as them. In the past, the TO RPLBZh did once have a full-time staff member. As mentioned above, the former president, Zamyatin, no longer worked as a driver once he became the full-time president of the organisation. During his term in office, he made a lot of progress for the organisation. Nevertheless, while the primary organisations and activists grew up, other activists found the experience of union meetings unpleasant. According to other activists, Zamyatin was indeed talented, but he became too authoritarian as time went on; his non-respectful attitude to other peoples’ opinions then caused internal scandals. The situation and their relationships got worse after he started to receive a high salary (compared to the drivers’ level at the time) from the financial support of the American trade unions. Since then he behaved more like a lawyer and a commander than a union leader until he finally left the RPLBZh circle and moved to Murmansk city.⁸² This unhappy experience led other activists to reject the idea of arranging any joint fund or using a joint fund to maintain paid trade union staff to carry out the organisational work. Since his departure, the TO RPLBZh OZhD and its primary organisations had no full-time trade union staff. The reason is partly due to their financial incapacity, and partly related to their past bad experience.

Apart from training in labour law, the territorial organisation is constantly committed to conducting union seminars to teach active members more specific knowledge and skills. Many organisational skills and knowledge were taught through cooperation with Egida, and received a certain influence from the seminar style of the AFL-CIO-supported Solidarity Centre. The skills they were taught have so far had a serious effect, but sometimes even activists feel that this knowledge is doubtful (calling those skills the ‘American way’ or ‘Western way’) While talking about how to promote the union’s activity, the chairperson of the most active union committee tried to assert that their experience is also positive. It is interesting to cite the words with which he responded to my question here. He argued that,

‘Every country has its own way, and we Russians have our way. The way we do it currently is to send union newspapers to different depots… The ways of showing our existence can be very different. Those methods which are interesting for active young people can be difficult for us elders. The experience of those big, FNPR unions may be a lot, and we are just like kids. I also dream that one day our trade union can be very big. But this won’t be now ’

He then also gave his own estimation of their pressure on ROSPROFZhEL:

‘Our union at least made many workers leave that union (ROSPROFZhEL), even if they did not join ours. They know ROSPROFZhEL did nothing. Their power is only from being in the pocket of the employer’ (Andrei Gavrilov, July 14 2003)

In general, it is quite common for the active members of these primary organisations to take a rather passive attitude to their definition of organisational work which is due, in their words, to the fact that most of their colleagues are passive regarding their own rights and conditions.

Nevertheless, the whole scene can be reviewed elaborately: what is the force which makes them stick to these activities when they see no prospects for their organisation’s potential. Indeed, there has been and there is still a very high risk of getting sacked for carrying out union activity, especially in an environment with weak sympathy from their colleagues. People like the ex-chairperson of TCh-12 were given no duty or payment for a couple of years and were then finally sacked after the 1998 strike; and several activists have relied on or still rely on finding themselves ‘levaya rabota’ (‘work on the side’). These people certainly have been deprived of their capacity to help members due to the fact that they were not officially employees. These people, on the one hand, are not union officers like those we usually see at the top of a developed (institutionalised) union structure; they receive little material benefit for running a primary union body, but still come to the union office and attend the union meetings. They are the people, on the other hand, shaping the real exercise of union functions while being reluctant to take active steps to develop the organisational activities of the union.

• 
  Coordination work－personal contact
  

From the previous description, we may capture an illustration of the organisational activity of RPLBZh, which provides more understanding of the union’s development and their current capacity. Importantly, coordination among the TO RPLBZh OZhD member organisations embraces an interesting geographical or workplace characteristic. Firstly, just as the two depot union committees TCh-10 and TCh-8 rely on the latter to carry out their supposed function of protecting members’ interests, such a situation also happens with the union committees at TCh-12 and TCh-20 at the Finland Station. Secondly, although the union committee of TCh-21 has the strongest membership, the inconvenience of its communications means that the territorial organisation still has its centre at TCh-8. The result is that the union committee of TCh-8 plays the critical role for the local development of RPLBZh union activities.

The interrelationship and communication among RPLBZh territorial organisations reflects another ambiguous development. Firstly, the financial affairs of each primary organisation are kept separate rather than being coordinated with one another. Understandably, every primary organisation finally has managed to obtain its own office and the necessary equipment, though what is evident is the visible gap in capacity among these organisations. Each primary organisation, normally, only works on its own; therefore, they have to count on their varying amount of membership fees to make their own decisions on buying basic office facilities and equipment. Secondly, the real practice of the territorial organisation does not provide significant support to its trade union committees. The work of each union office is therefore not collectively endeavoured. Even the resources of TO RPLBZh itself are quite limited; since the work of each union committee is also unevenly distributed, consequently the organ of the TO itself eventually relies on its richest primary organisation to provide for its basic operation. The situation has got worse since Zamyatin, the former president of TO RPLBZh OZhD, left the circle. Despite taking the unpleasant experience away with him, the territorial organ has found it more difficult to associate or integrate their local organisations without his presence. Such a fact shows that the capacity of the TO RPLBZh OZhD relies heavily on individual ambition and ability, while even a very authoritative activist (leader) still sticks to his most familiar workplace.

The next president (until 2005), Boris Kharitonov, was the chairperson of the trade union committee of TCh-21 at the same time, who once owned high authority among members in his own depot; he was also a strong figure in conducting the August 1998 strike. However, under his leadership TO RPLBZh OZHD did not formally meet for the whole of 2003. The fact was that he was not very keen to call regular meetings of the territorial organisation or even to attend the meetings. It was said that he would rather dream about how members should react to hit the administration hard than get stuck in to the routine work of the trade union. Therefore, several activists were confused about whether they should replace him (since he just concentrated on his post as the chairperson of his own trade union committee) or keep him in post. During his presidency, most TO organisational work fell on his deputy Zhyutikov. Apart from his communicative personality, his experience and skill were developed in training by the AFL-CIO union centre in Washington D.C. His activity presented an obvious role model for the presence of the local RPLBZh activity.⁸³

My observational research soon noticed the role of individual figures in weak organisations such as the RPLBZh organisations. The whole character of the coordination work seems to derive not only from one leader but from the whole activist networks within the organisations. More critically, over the interviews, most respondents tried to avoid such sorts of questions or topics. In interviews about how to resolve internal organisational problems, the core activists directly admitted that was a big problem but there would be more problems if they talked about it. The answer of the chairperson of union committee TCh-8 presents a typical and interesting image. He believed that he cannot resolve this problem by using his union post, despite the fact that he was the deputy president of RPLBZh at the same time. Our dialogue ran as follows:

‘Andrei, Vitali just said that your TO president did not call the regular meeting…, but members could ask him to call the meeting, right? Or, could you use your position in the trade union? You are the deputy president of RPLBZh, to tell him to call the meeting, can’t you? ’ (S.K.)

‘(smile first) Yeah, I do have some more titles (laugh), but I can not do it.’ (the chairperson).

‘What do you mean by that…?’ (S.K)

‘See…Try to understand this, here the matter is － once we talked about organisational work we would have even created more organisational problems’. (Andrei Gavrilov, May 13, 2003)

At the end, he stressed that at least they have learned how to tolerate different attitudes or even political ideologies.

As one of the consequences, very often these RPLBZh activists on the October Railway can only recognise the chairperson of each union committee; which means active members or the deputy of each committee hardly have a chance to get to know each other very well. In the interviews, the activists did not hesitate to admit that the operation of their primary organisations is highly separated. Just as the chairperson of the trade union committee TCh-8 expressed it, in the above talk, he continued, ‘Each of our primary organisations is just like a small kingdom, and each of us is just like a petty tsar’ (Andrei Gavrilov, May 13, 2003). With such a character of the RPLBZh organisation on the October Railway, it is not difficult to conclude that the territorial organisation does not embrace a broader base to represent its members as a whole. In daily practice it exists as a small circle for improving leaders’ court experiences with individual or local (depot-based) cases.

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