Unionism individualised: the Confederation of Free Trade Unions on October Railway

3.3 Unionism individualised: the Confederation of Free Trade Unions on October Railway

The motivation of establishing KSP OZhD was to form an alternative type of organisation which is different from the fashionable professional principle of the early 90s. Theoretically, the practical benefit for the new organisation is that now its founder organisations can declare that it covers all categories of railway workers across different professions. Following such a declaration, the new organisation was expected to run the joint task of defending workers’ socio-labour rights and gaining the status of signing collective agreements. However, the aim of negotiating and signing a collective agreement had never reached, due to the reluctance of the administration of the Railway to sit and discuss with KSP OZhD. In fact, the administration quite strongly suppressed the KSP OZhD organisation and its influence among workers, and it has succeeded. Two of the union leaders were sacked in 1998, and the administration even published a special guide book denouncing the legitimacy and authority of each founder organisation. KSP OZhD has had little success in improving workers’ general conditions, their main successes being through legal conflict in court. The only participation related to the process of railway work the Confederation has participated was the inspection of working conditions; since activists from KSP OZhD gained positions in the labour inspection commission. That is one of the very few stages on which they can exert pressure and be a serious troublemaker for the administration and the inspector from the Ministry of Labour.⁸⁷

Since the composition of KSP OZhD includes various union organisations, the rules of representation have been quite a sensitive issue. The regular session of KSP OZhD was constituted of seven representatives in charge of simple division of organisational aspects. The executive position comprises one president, three deputy presidents and one secretary. Representatives from RPLBZh take four seats, but the composition sometimes gives rise to sharp arguments when the participants make decisions.

3.3.1 Activity: weak mobilisation capacity

One permanent problem facing KSP OZhD activity is their effective membership base. Most of their actions faced the difficulty of attracting workers’ concern or attention, thus the actions actually became a symbolic move. Such an ineffective form of action raised some doubts and criticisms among activists. After their actions, KSP OZhD would set up a discussion and collect information to prepare their next move. A critical review of the effect of past actions, however, was usually absent. They made their effort by attending an international conference. In face of the popular reluctance to join the trade union, as we have seen earlier, the method of KSP OZhD has not reached any specific conclusion. Some activists were keen to undertake more promotion to increase their membership; some thought that they would just spend their money without any visible result. By and large, the whole confederation left the problem of attracting more railway workers to each organisation; and the form of union activity, as described in previous sections, has still been that they provide help or legal consultation for people who are very angry or disappointed with the traditional trade union.

Although the issue of representation gave rise to many internal quarrels, it did not lead to further conflicts; it seems all the representatives reached a way to accommodate themselves to it. The earlier problem, however, was that even though ‘representatives’ were dispatched by their own organisation, their own activists did not get to know other active people from other depots in their own organisation. This indicates that the formation of KSP OZhD was in reality to achieve legitimacy for the negotiation of the collective agreement, but not as the basis of inter-organisational support. Even when the later focus was to form a visible opposition to the potential privatisation of Russian railways, the barrier among member organisations was still felt. As a consequence, the difference in trade-union-owned resources is too obvious; apart from RPLBZh primary organisations, only the Refrigerators’ free trade union has their own office and necessary equipment. Nevertheless, the Refrigerators’ office is far from downtown, the regular meetings therefore are always held in the office of the trade union committee of TCh-8. The monthly meetings were full of shouting and individual quarrels, which sometimes were completely inexplicable. Reaching its fifth year, the Confederation still maintained its original style in spending most of the time discussing and deciding rather abstract problems. By contrast, serious or peaceful discussions of their organisational problems were very rarely brought onto their meeting’s agenda. Though activists gathered very frequently, they usually discussed their external affairs. For example, who should be in charge of contacting publishers; when and where will there be a conference or international action; who is going to represent the confederation? While the method and problem of mobilizing their own people or the possibility of improving their members’ participation were not discussed, it seemed that most representatives had already reached agreement that such topics were not their concern; that kind of issue can go ahead only naturally and gradually, and it depends upon each worker’s awareness. This actually reflects the problem of the interrelationship among these organisations. One indication is that their joint seminars with local groups or organisations rarely get any mutual support from their counterparts. Not surprisingly, they still called some people to come but simply those who were their close friends. Another permanent issue was how to distribute the portion of their spending to each organisation: for example, the cost of their pamphlet publication.⁸⁸

The example of MPS is worth further description. The president of ‘MPS’, Aleksandr Argunov, one of the most active leaders within the KSP OZhD circle, was also the most disputatious person within the circle, partly due to his frank manner of engaging in discussion at the regular meetings, which always annoyed other activists. The other fact was that despite his own organisational activism, his members were little recognised by RPLBZh and other trade union activists, perhaps deriving from their impression of the professional and educational level of track workers. Compared to the work of the members of the other organisations, the track worker is the only profession which works on the railway but not on the trains.

3.3.2 The difficulties

There has been little coordination in the relationship between the TO RPLBZh OZhD and the central organization in Moscow and KSP OZhD to develop broader contact between the organisations. With such an inter-organisational character, the role of TO RPLBZh in its connections with the RPLBZh central office and KSP OZhD has been complicated. The chairperson of TCh-8 was the president of KSP OZhD at the same time as being the deputy president of RPLBZh. The conduct of an international conference on the security and perspectives of the railway industry held in Leningrad Region in November 2001 showed the eventually ambiguous connections. The plan and arrangements for the international conference were made in the name of KSP OZhD, but not RPLBZh, although RPLBZh representatives dominated KSP OZhD. As mentioned earlier, the leader of KSP OZhD, who is also an RPLBZh leader, did not honour the contribution of either TO RPLBZh OZhD or RPLBZh in the first place. Similarly, the RPLBZh head office barely recognised the conference as an achievement of RPLBZh as a whole. Such a triangular cooperation brought more distrust instead of further cooperation. Probably derived from the previous experience, when people started to arrange a new international conference in 2003, an inner, underground, struggle between KSP OZhD and RPLBZh immediately came out, but again, the role of TO RPLBZh was put aside. The fact is that to keep the internal power balance, their decision was to reduce the original senior status of the Territorial organisation over its primary organisations. The conflicting views toward the authority and strategy of a broader coordination seemed to cause further problems for the running of KSP OZhD.

Poor internal coordination

The second problem is around the coordination function of KSP OZhD. Firstly, it is obvious that the current leadership of TO RPLBZh OZhD did not pay much respect to the value and authority of KSP OZhD. The Confederation is unique in the organisational life of all RPLBZh routines, but the assigned functions of the Confederation did not bring more immediate feedback to their own primary organisations. In their view, most of the meetings and questions discussed are rarely constructive. Moreover, most RPLBZh members do not recognise the KSP OZhD as one of their senior organisations. They started to complain that the latter has been a useless body for quite a while.

An RPLBZh activist gave his estimation of the future of KSP OZhD, ‘The point is in this organisation, no one has enough capacity to stand up and to take more responsibility; everyone just wants to pretend they are some kind of leader’ (VitaliZh, June 05, 2003). He then denounced those leaders who simply desired to occupy the post of being a leader, however tiny their trade union is. In his view, the future depends on RPLBZh making the effort to establish a united trade union, but ‘they (non-RPLBZh union leaders and activists, since he did not use ‘comrade’) would not support the formation of a real united trade union’ (Conversation on the train June 20, 2003).⁸⁹ From the other side, those non-RPLBZh leaders also complained that the real attempt of RPLBZh was always to maintain their dominant power within the KSP OZhD. The first deputy president of KSP OZhD, the PSE leader (Petrov) also frankly admitted that he does not have good relationships with other trade unionists. Apart from their differences over ideology, there is another quite impressive reason. Activists from other union organisations may despise the scale of his trade union, or, in other words, the result of his personal work. Indeed, not only the president of RPLBZh but also members from RPLBZh frankly showed their despising attitude against these ‘not-serious union persons’. Moreover, these activists do not believe the others can understand their organisation’s difficulties, not to mention to give up their own control of their ‘union’ activities. As a consequence, whether these activists admited it privately or openly, the idea of building further cross-occupational unity, integrated ideology and union strategy for these relatively friendly organisation was unlikely to take hold.

The history of KSP OZhD might have led one to doubt that it is a serious unity. The fact is the answer might have a very different perspective from insiders and outsiders. As a participant observer, I have firstly seen so many quarrels, but after that repeated yelling, stubborn speaking and even cursing, they could still reach a kind of consent. Many times the moment they finished the meeting was strangely touching for me. Asked for their own estimations, some of the participants said that they do believe that the style of KSP OZhD really shows a model for unity of the trade unions on the October Railway. The visible dilemma, however, expresses the organisational or internal structural difficulties.

3.3.3 The sign of doom

Such unity confronted more challenges. The first and most fundamental challenge was related to the position of RPLBZh, and the superior position of drivers within the circle. The adoption of the new RPLBZh charter, which allows the union to recruit members from other occupations, has now given them more reasons to get rid of KSP OZhD. Certainly, for RPLBZh activists the perspectives of the new period had immediately demonstrated a key option to challenge the so-called unity as well as the real ambition of RPLBZh’s change in their charter. As their response, none of the non-RPLBZh trade union leaders has considered their trade union’s joining RPLBZh as an option. Such a reaction did not surprise TO RPLBZh leaders, one of the RPLBZh members believed, because the leaders of those trade unions are afraid of losing their leader position if they join RPLBZh. In addition, both Argunov and Petrov had accused the current president of KSP OZhD of having a real position rather close to the position of RPLBZh’s Moscow head office, and that he will repeat the critical mistake of the RPLBZh Moscow office: they actually obey the direction of the Americans (the AFL-CIO sponsored Solidarity Centre), and that is also because they rely heavily on American financial support. Petrov further emphasised that to take the American’s money can be one thing but to keep independence is another. Unlike RPLBZh activists, in an informal dinner meeting the non-RPLBZh activists stressed their difficult conditions:

‘Some of us have to spend our own money to keep our trade unions running, Argunov did this, so did I. Although I do not like the personality of guys like Argunov, at least they not only work very hard but also keep to their own position’ (Group meeting with activists at an invited dinner event May 20, 2003).

The row around the leadership and its real position in the face of privatisation was finally exposed at the end of 2003. The preparation work for the international conference in Moscow led to huge scandal-style attacks among RPLBZh and the other trade unions. The free trade unions did not want to see KSP OZhD give up their control of this conference, while the local RPLBZh tried to persuade them that only the RPLBZh head office could find the sponsorship money to conduct such a conference, and that will be the only realistic way considering the union’s penurious financial condition. The other fact was that the current RPLBZh president, Kulikov, had criticised KSP OZhD as an ineffective organisation with too many heads. However, the balance could be kept because the president of KSP OZhD, Gavrilov, was holding a dual position; as president of an RPLBZh organisation, he kept some distance from the Moscow office. For this conference he finally decided to support Kulikov.⁹⁰ Realising that RPLBZh would take over the post of KSP OZhD as the Russian representative in the European anti-railway privatisation campaign, at the end all non-RPLBZh organisations refused to attend the October conference in Moscow. The PSE leader (who had been in charge of communication with foreign groups since the last conference in 2001) even sent an e-mail to their French counterpart saying that RPLBZh had never sincerely opposed railway privatisation. The message successfully made the European counterpart boycott the RPLBZh conference. The whole process certainly blew up the little remaining trust and balance among the trade union activists. After such a split, combined with the new direction of the RPLBZh membership, KSP OZhD effectively ceased to exist and has not called regular meetings since 2004.

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