Workers and their working conditions on October Railway

2.2.5 Weak collective identity

Getting through my research field work, time after time I realized that, except for engine drivers, most railway workers do have opportunities to work with a small group (brigade) in their job. Apart from teamwork in their workplaces, another relevant occasion for workers to meet is their participation in the ‘planning meeting’ (planerka) in their own workplaces, where the chief of each shop or department will give a report and workers can raise their specific questions. More than that, the planning meeting can be held in the conference hall so workers usually use such an occasion to talk, to chat with their colleagues, and to spare their time. Thus, an investigation on these occasions provided useful insight to capture more workplace interactions.

Let us firstly look at train drivers. Do train drivers really work with little contact out of their small circle? As described earlier, except for seeing other brigades occasionally at the final destinations, they are very rarely able to meet with their colleagues. Certainly, the character of their job allows drivers to see themselves in an isolated status. A regular exception from that is to attend their own planerka, this is though more of a whole depot collective meeting than conductors’ (conductors have their planerka held by the train chief). The average participants of the drivers’ planerka are from 30 to hundreds of people. To some extent, the planerka is a very interesting occasion for workplace participation. Drivers are able to share their opinions, raise their concerns and sometimes they may challenge the chief of their depot. Nevertheless, drivers very rarely recognise this opportunity for them to communicate or to meet with each other, and the nature of such a meeting is still very much a managerial stage. While the drivers say their pieces, the chief might listen, but the fact is more that at anytime he may also take control so as not to let the discussion go further. Therefore, we may find that although an independent union organisation of drivers was created and gave them a chance to promote an alternative resolution in the history of the 1992 strike and in other events, opportunities to form common demands are rare.

The other interesting character of train drivers is their narrow definition of their self-identification. The ‘isolationist view’ among train drivers even appears among those who work on different types of locomotives or at different depots. In an interview with driver Anton, he showed the typical attitude that driving an elektrovoz (electric locomotive) seems to give the most pride. During our talks, quite often, I was confused by their ignorance of the importance of their counterparts working on different types of locomotive or train; these drivers are more concerned about their superior status. In a conversation over the wage difference between driving two different types of locomotives, driver AntonP asserted his wage (11,000) was not less than the other one’s (15,000) in terms of responsibility.

‘You see these drivers, they work alone. But their wages are not double. So I won’t say they earn more than me, I even think theirs are too little.’ In a further talk, I asked if their demands on electric locomotives are so important, what about the demands of drivers on other sorts of locomotives or trains at other depots on their eyes. The response was polite but chilly: ‘The point is other drivers have not understood how to care yet.’ (AntonP, diesel locomotive assistant, June 09, 2003)

Moving to the immediate colleagueship of mechanics, conductors and train mechanics, compared to engine drivers, which is generated from their relative cooperation in a team we can easily see a much more collective atmosphere. The work of mechanics or electricians is usually based at an independent depot or department, where they work on two or three shifts. At these immediate workplaces, there are about 20 workers for each shift. Workers there do embrace more opportunities to develop a collective atmosphere, due to the arrangement of work, cleaning room, rest room, whether the condition of that is good or bad. Nevertheless, the concrete duty is, normally, not well coordinated, so that workers very often only work alone or with one or two other colleagues. This links to the way Russian workers arrange their cooperation within the work process. Therefore, such opportunities in general are still subordinated to the management of the work.

There is another place to observe railway workers’ communication. Here we take the conditions of material subsistence into account: the conditions in the work place for workers’ social meeting are different: there are places where workers can meet and chat with tea, coffee or snacks, sometimes even drinking vodka. Nevertheless, such spaces have very strong individuality. As we mentioned earlier, the culture and the character of the administration in each depot is varied. All the depots in my field work had their own characteristics. Within the buildings of the administration, some have security guards, but some do not. Take the branch VCh-8 as an example, workers such as conductors may see each other either in their workplace (where it is rather inactive) or in front of the administration building (quite often). The territory of the carriage depot VCh-8 is always busy and open, while the nearest locomotive depot TCh-8 is open but chill; locomotive depot TCh-12 is not open to outsiders but the two competitive unions’ information is richer than at TCh-8. And if we look at the small depot ‘Ruchy’, we have seen in such a marginal depot workers enjoy more of an atmosphere of ‘self-management’. In some depots, such as VCh-8 and Ruchy, they do have a more common atmosphere, but such environments and conditions, however, did not bring different patterns of workers’ interaction. Although the workers use these places, further colleagueship did not seem to result from this. In many ways, we can see that they are more subordinated to their immediate master or chief despite their relatively convenient communication. The traditional assumption that a close community environment may make workers embrace more collective consciousness does not seem to be confirmed by my investigation. Whether the workers are working collectively or individually, they are well aware of the expanding power of their administration.

Apart from the interaction among workers of the same profession, interaction among different professional groups has a similar but even poorer capacity. The previous investigation also reveals the relationships among workers of the four occupations: driver, conductor, mechanic and the combined role of train chief. During the route, drivers are usually alone or with their assistants (two together), but they also have to pass or receive signals from the station or controlling centre. And they may also have contact with the locomotive mechanics in the depot when they report and ask them to fix problems with the locomotive. In addition, conductors are obliged to associate with drivers to observe and complete the secure conditions while trains are approaching and departing platforms. Furthermore, from the narratives above there are several characteristics of the working conditions of both conductors and train mechanics to note. Firstly, though these workers work on the isolated moving train, whether collectively or individually, people are still very loosely connected. Train electricians only participate in their own planning meeting, neither with drivers nor with conductors, although they work together on the train with drivers and especially with conductors. Train mechanics and conductors seem not to have space to perceive colleagueship with each other, even though they work in a very closed environment and follow the same demands from the train chief. The outlet for the hardships of working conditions was mainly in relation to their immediate senior manager. And that is eventually resolved by way of informal individual bargaining.

Do railway workers recognise the fact that they are fairly distanced from either their occupations or individual lives? The interviews focused on workers’ responses to their working life to clarify the immediate features of collectivism and/or individualism. The group interview below was held sitting in the rest room of the small depot ‘Ruchy’, located in the outskirts of St Petersburg.

S.K.(researcher):

‘So, Dima, as a driver of a depot employees’ transport vehicle, what do you think about your job? Do you think you are one of the railway workers? Or, do you feel your professional occupation is actually closer to a bus driver’

Dima: ‘Surely, I am (a railway worker)’.

S.K.:

‘But why and how? Do you work with these mechanics? I mean here is a check station for locomotives but your work does not directly relate to what they do and your work problems are probably different from theirs, isn’t it?’

Sergei: ‘You see, that was why I say each of us should just face his own problems!’

S.K.: ‘So, what do you think about Dima’s position, does he belong to your collective here? Andrei and Sergei?’

Andrei and Sergei: ‘He is, there is no doubt of that’.

S.K.: ‘Even if he does not have the knowledge of railway work that you have?’

Andrei:

(The conversation continued and moved to another topic in 10 minutes.)

S.K.: ‘Anyway, I have another question to you. Do you usually go out with your colleagues? For example, our workers may organise a car team and drive to the mountains during their free time.’

Andrei:

The first response here shows an immediate recognition of a common identity; the second part, however, shows there is little concrete meaning behind the recognition. It seems that in this relatively remote depot, the formation of occupational identity does not develop in relation to their professions or specialities, but is rather benefited by the characteristics of the location, the general environment (a simply organised depot, a loose management).⁵⁶ By contrast, when we continued our talk and moved to how workers can help each other in face of work difficulties, people started to insist on personal abilities or personalities. Asked what help they expected the unions to provide, workers who were neither ROSPROFZhEL nor RPLBZh members suddenly became cautious or just laughed at such ideas. Or in other cases they also had another typical answer: ‘As for me, I am len’ (lazy).’ Or ‘Laziness is the mother!’⁵⁷

In various interviews, similar expressions, not surprisingly, also came out from other interviewees. This may refer to what Clarke (1996a) called ‘alienated collectivism’; which embraces the idea that a vague collective identification may be commonly shared but is only very weakly implemented, as the collective is identified in abstract terms, identified with ‘the railway’ personified by the management, rather than being the expression of any self-organisation of the workers. This collectivism is even very often contradictory, especially in the context that collective reactions to the discrimination of management were rarely mentioned. The first impression during my fieldwork period was similar to the description of Ashwin’s (1999) ethnographic study of miners. Nevertheless, over all the contacts I established, neither in the honour of any past collectivity nor in the rhetoric of solidarity, was a collective spirit mentioned in any concrete perspective. The only exception among my interviews was a small ceremony of the engine drivers who had participated in the 1998 strike. Strikers who immediately lost their jobs tried to organise a network for mutual support. After the 1998 strike, some of the participants decided to have an annual gathering to remember the historical event. For that they identified a few places to spend their day off. But even such events were only held a few times.⁵⁸

These features represent a typical sample of our observations of the barrier to the evolution from individual problems to collective identification. From the sociological perspective, the gap is clear: the boundary between the potential vague collectivism and individual identification implying individual resolution is the first part; but in practice workers are rather reluctant to proceed from individual resolution in the face of a work problem to an expectation of seeking a collective or broader recognition with colleagues. Russian workers have their own answers to such a fact. A train mechanic suggested that the current ‘mentality’ should be attributed to the situation of changes of life values; for him, it is clear that those good, collective virtues have all gone. As he put the feeling in his own words, ‘Ha! Unfortunately, the old saying ‘‘One for all, all for one!’’ has no longer existed in our workplace’ (SergeiK, May 18, 2003).

Another young carriage mechanic gave his own commentary, calling this a ‘Russian pathology’.

‘You see what these members have done to our (union) president. They joined for immediate, temporary reasons, once they got what they wanted then they left. Although we can say they will continue their moral support.’ He then confirmed the words again.

‘Basically to say, people only want to get their own advantages. Due to such a reason you can see why those who ever joined Leonid’s trade union – our trade union – then immediately left it when they had got what they needed’ (LeonidM, Carriage mechanic, June 14, 2003).⁵⁹

The general picture of the railway workers’ interaction described in this section is the idea of feelings of comradeship that have found no practical realisation, and are simply left as a memory.

2.2.6 Grievances and conflicts

If we look at the special articles of the ‘Regulation on discipline for Workers of Railway Transport of the Russian Federation’ and the ‘Sectoral Tariff Agreement of Russian Railways’ (2001-2003), we may have an impression that, benefiting from the consideration of transport safety, Russian railway workers do enjoy a relatively high standard of working conditions and labour rights. However, if that is the case why have so many workers left the railways and why did even the president of the traditional trade union reveal that in 2000 alone, 150,000 workers left their jobs in the Russian Railways. Indeed, most of my interviewees had so many negative opinions about their situation. Obviously, if management always forgot even the indexation of wages, as workers argued, it is easier to understand why railway workers are struggling with the very basic issues which were already supposedly guaranteed within those official documents. By generalising the basic grievances of railway workers on the October Railway, we see that the issue of overtime working occupies the first place, while health concerns and the low wages stand in the next places. As one of the consequences most individual demands (disputes) of drivers mainly concern the arrangement of working time and rest. Through an alternative union campaign over the additional leave (dopolnitelnye otpuski) for locomotive brigades in 1996, the campaigners accused that the officials of MPS had misinterpreted the laws and ‘stolen’ their additional leave (RPLBZh, 2002, p.54). Similar accounts show the fundamental, constant problem of reaching rational working schedules between the depot administration and their drivers.

All the concerns are actually two-fold. For railway workers these are daily hardships, on the one hand; and also understandable outcomes of the problem due to their ‘corrupt and incompetent’ administration, on the other. Just as the workers often expressed it, the so-called work rules actually contradict each other in practice. During the interviews I conducted, a particular message over the mess of managerial organisation of work constantly appeared, which had always impressed me during my fieldwork period. In some cases, workers were sent to carry out assigned duties without a practical work schedule. They might get the final information and know if they have work to do only after they had arrived at their workplaces; some of them even had to make a phone call every time to check if they really had to go to work. Once they started work, the heavy load may require them to have no rest. One of my interviewees, a mechanic, let me make a close observation of these features in a train waiting in the depot. He very soon found out he had no clue what he should do and he did not know where to complain. (He had worked here for more than 10 years). Only while we were leaving did he then decide to turn back to his section and wait for further instructions. When I was visiting the so-called ‘what a mess’ workplace during his shift, I followed him to check all the carriages; but finally, he found out no one could tell him what needed to be done and what he should fix, despite the fact that he had been told to complete the ‘work’. We then had about 30 minutes to talk in the carriage of the train. He said he would need to ask the boss exactly what they wanted him to do. ‘There is no proper graphic for workers here!!’ he complained.

‘And I really don’t understand why a company like mine that has existed for more than 100 years still can’t develop proper management. I tell you, for this reason I may think we need private ownership to run this company, maybe the new management will do it better’(VladK, PEM, May 18, 2003).

Workers complained that nowadays their employers only use all the possibilities to make workers work harder and cheat on workers. And in the case of Vlad, that was the reason he decided to join the alternative trade union.

‘I can’t understand why our lives have become like this. I feel like we are living in prison.’ Compared to before, the scale of the chiefs (management) has grown up maybe even ten times more. ‘Before we could work with an easy atmosphere, and that was good. Now we don’t know whom we should follow and that really disturbs our work’ (VladK, PEM, October 11, 2004).

Relevant complaints can be heard over the basic environment of workers’ workplaces. Workers often mentioned how dirty or how messy their sections are. The poor water supplies, dirty bathrooms, broken heaters, all of these have made workers have little trust in their management. To take one example, according to the ‘Law and the Regulations on the Russian Railways’, the fire fighting conditions have to be seriously guaranteed. But on the day of the joint inspection of work security, we went to one depot where most fire-fighting equipment was empty and most water pipes were broken. Furthermore, the disorder of the workplace opened a broader possibility for various kinds of corruption. There were different corruption scandals and possibilities around each workplace. From the repair shop to the individual food service on the moving train, various sandals and rumours also eroded workers’ trust in the railway authority.⁶⁰

Nonetheless, most people just showed themselves to feel that no one can really improve the conditions, so that there is no sense in raising conflicts. When I followed an alternative union leader to visit a mechanic repair shop, his old colleagues just teased and said ‘our boss’. Compared to engine drivers’ relatively high advantages on the Russian labour market, within the sector there have been serious threats of the low wage and the job insecurity of conductors and electricians, as well as track repair workers. Especially, for railway workers who are local residents, they have felt the administration now keen to recruit people who are from rural areas, for the administration can load off most of the cost of meeting employees’ requirements for material support.

‘The administration now uses new tricks of recruiting people who are from the countryside but not local residents. These people face much more life problems needed to resolve personally. They have to be obedient to the administration. In my workplace, you can even find a person who was a lecturer in university who taught history but now works as a coach conductor’ (LeonidM, electrician, June 08 2003).

Meanwhile, the whole situation for railway workers was getting harder. In face of the depression of the national economy, and then the reform programme (the privatisation of the railway system as the core of that), even engine drivers have been considered with employment reduction. The massive scale of imposed or future redundancy had made the official trade unions to admit the potential problem constantly.

The grievances are indeed multitudinous; workers have also felt that the hardship of their working conditions is a result of the management imposing their power in the name of the long-existent work regulations. Nevertheless, whatever the workers may complain about privately, most of them keep a clear attitude of fearing to resist. It is never easy for us outsiders to understand what caused their ‘fear’. (To some extent, people cannot really tell outsiders the very truth because they have to wonder if they will get into more trouble.) That is a constant reaction deeply rooted in their minds. Indeed, the poor arrangements of their duties had caused workers’ negative response. The workers are obedient to these regulations, with their subordination to the strongly authoritarian atmosphere in railway work. The reason, as they explained, a depot chief can easily demote even a first-class engine driver to assistant in half a year whether they violated the work rule or simply spoke out to defend their own rights. Apart from their immediate fear of losing job, the other expression of their fear is referred to the strength of administrative power. A young driver assistant described such:

‘Our managers are so powerful when they order us to meet their demands; but they suddenly have very little role when they face the need to resolve our problems.’ To talk about the relations between workers and the employer, he continued his judgement: ‘They hold meetings, give various promises, but do nothing. They should be thankful that people here are very passive. They only worry about the immediate pressure from above.’ (VadimK, May 18, 2003 and October 11, 2004)

All these experiences the workers perceived can refer to the letter of a group of conductors mentioned earlier, who have come to a common consensus of ‘Don’t like it, then quit now!’

In relation to such fear, the most popular option to deal with difficulties is therefore to take an extremely individual approach or seek personal solutions. They might need to find another job in other depots, or to learn how to apply favourable articles in the regulations or laws on railway operation to defend their personal position in the face of their immediate head of management. During my fieldwork observation, I got several chances to follow the long process of how workers resolve individual disputes / disciplinary cases with their administration. The process is indicative of the extent of the use of individual negotiation to the end as the only possibility within the employment relationship of the Russian railway system. There were no cases of collective resistance that ever came up. Sometimes people were cheered up by the outcome of individual cases. One active member of the union believed that female workers are more active than male. He made a comparison between conductors and his own colleagues, and thought female conductors are more ready to defend their own rights while most of his colleagues still take a wait-and-see attitude. His optimistic point of view did not last for long. In six months, especially after he had participated in two cases of female conductors’ disputes, he gave up his original belief in the union’s potential.⁶¹ And this seems to be the fate of the development of the trade union movement for Russian railway workers.

The case of the assistant driver Yury mentioned in the previous section showed that even workers who had committed themselves to the union role still have to rely on a personal solution, as he had when he had settled his previous workplace problem. Many workers who had complained about the working conditions said that they got used to resolving the problem alone but finally realized that they needed more help. Following this, their main concern was to find out how the guarantees from various laws had been violated by the employers, so that the aim of their actions (reactions) was to win back the protective functions which could be found within these laws. We have seen that most workers look for individual consultation rather then relying on the union’s strength to improve the general conditions. Generally to say, while facing discipline problems workers showed that what they really prefer is a union lawyer rather than the union as a whole.

The other dimension to note is that many people fought while at the same time trying to find another job for survival. Since there is no effective institution to offer support, workers can only rely on help from their personal network. To take one example, driver Anton of Depot TCh-22 was sacked in 1999, he was still struggling with his case in the court in 2004. During these years he had to earn his money by being a causal mobile phone seller. When he came to St Petersburg he contacted his union network not only for legal support but also for his mobile selling business. In another case, assistant driver Aleksandr from Depot TCh-8 was a victim of the August 1998 strike and was laid off for 20 months after the event. During this time some of the sacked workers organised themselves to find and share job information. Such informal networks were, to some extent, a kind of life solidarity in their eyes, as he said,

‘We (drivers of diesel locomotives) resisted indeed, we did not soon give up, we really were aware of our rights, but we anyway still need to survive, so we support each other for taking and sharing part-time jobs’ (AleksandrP, locomotive assistant, June 05, 2003).

Certainly, by looking at the immediate labour relations of the Russian Railways in recent years we can see a very contrasting picture: there were indeed vast grievances while very few collective actions or demands have taken place. Apart from the several short disputes in the early 1990s, the general state of industrial relations on the Russian railways has been quite peaceful. The workers, as the above described, indeed had many complaints about their treatment and about the management; but most solutions for serious disputes relied on raising the cases in the courts. In this section we have mainly focused on the working conditions and those individual cases, but this does not mean that there have not been collective actions on the Russian railways, although there have been no massive industrial actions. Besides, most of these conflicts arose only on the initiative of the independent RPLBZh. The first stoppage in the period of the newly reborn Russian trade union movement was on December 26th and 27^th 1991, at the locomotive depot ‘Moskva-2’. Train drivers demanded higher wages, free food during working time, increased holidays up to 45 days and a 36 hours working week (KAS-KOR Information Bulletin 1-2, 1992 (85-6)). And so did locomotive drivers on the October Railway in June 1992 (a warning strike and strike committee had been established at depot TCh-12, and the administration soon agreed to negotiate a collective agreement with the alternative union).⁶² The stories presented above were full of frustration, anger and powerless passivity. Do workers in the railway sector have any channel to defend, or simply to express their grievances? The next section will introduce the two railway workers’ trade unions to understand the prospects for the social organisation of Russian railway workers. To ask what had changed since the appearance of the alternative railway trade unions we may firstly think of why so little has changed even as locomotive drivers took their lead to show the possibility of change. As for a further understanding of the collective demands (disputes) of Russian railway workers, I will present more details of the actions which have taken place and the development of Russian railway workers’ trade union organisations in the next sections.

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