Shih-Hao Kang a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology
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- Chapter 5 St Petersburg dockers in 2004 and 2005: the union’s mobilisation for strike actions
- Brief review of the 2004-2005 strike
4.4 ConclusionIn comparison with the position of FNPR unions, we see the position of the dockers’ unions at St Petersburg Seaport presents an interesting and quite contrasting scene. Indeed, a kind of collective identity based on specific working condition such as payment-health balance and brigade coordination did to some extent become evident among the port workers. Among the port workers, the docker profession plays the major part, and other professions expected their role should be considered as part of the collective. Although some activists themselves reveal that individualistic or passive attitudes as general features do exist, they also believe a strong trade union organisation can compensate for such weakness, while insisting that workers’ consciousness must be a critical element for the union. And such an identity was even embraced by the union organisation. The strength of making decisions on brigade leader candidates together with the management made the role of the brigade and brigade leader critical to the mobilisation and coordination of union capacity. Interestingly, the study of dockers at St Petersburg seaport provides similarities with the specific definition of the team system of work in a group of work organisation case studies in the West. ‘Structurally, team systems appear to foster patterns of solidarity and mutual support that enable workers to contest or recast managerial initiatives. Finally, and in more cultural or discursive terms, by introducing the language of participation into the workplace, team systems provide workers with a legitimate rhetorical framework with which to claim decision-making powers they have previously been denied’(Vallas 2003, p.220) The brigades / union groups firstly associated as strong cells have enabled the union to retain a real ability to mobilise its members to take industrial action. Thus the making of a broader ‘community’ proved possible at the St Petersburg Seaport. Their words, their suggestions show the union activists did have clear audiences to appeal to – the members, the union activists, and the brigade and brigade leaders. The union organisation provided a platform for its members from different companies to share similar support. Such collective identity is most concretised at the brigade work level (inward), for within the labour process different brigades might be encouraged by management policy to compete with each other; and/or at the level of the specific division of labour – the specialisation of the company (outward). Therefore, we have seen that the types of union position are not really indifferent. The local RPD union organisations at the port comprise the majority workforce of the main stevedore companies (mostly dockers), and therefore have gained legitimacy for collective bargaining. The traditional union organisation did not represent another arm of the administration to oppress the local RPD organisation. Moreover, with its dominant status of worker representation, the primary organisations and their local unity organ, the Port Organisation (Committee) of RPD of St Petersburg Seaport, have been quite active in waging collective actions to defend the interests of the port workers. And the organisation did maintain its strength in a constant state of power balance with the port administration and the various companies. In comparison with the stories of the October Railway workers we have seen in the previous chapters, the fact that there have been only a few cases of individual victimisation shows the strength of RPD port organisations. The power balance between the union and the employer has been quite active. More importantly, the way that the port committee worked for the collective agreement showed the authority of the union organisations, which is reflected in the way members embrace a highly disciplined idea of union participation. While facing labour disputes, the union conferences had then provided the fundamental grass roots base for the decisions of the union leadership. Therefore, although the daily activity of the union organisation can only be made by leaders or key activists, the port committee of RPD at the St Petersburg Seaport has remained a grass-roots orientated union organisation. It is noteworthy that, as we have seen in the political conflicts that followed the replacement of the CPSU regime in the early 1990s, Russian trade union organisations were forced to find a safe position against the threats of the new regime. The general priority for most trade unions was to retain the union’s status, which meant accommodating to the new political realities and collaborating with the employer within the workplace. Unlike these trade union organisations, the newborn dockers’ union was not preoccupied with securing the union’s survival but rather with advancing its members’ interests. Such characteristics distinguish the port organisations from the enormous but inactive FNPR trade unions. From RPD union organisations’ struggles at the port, we should firstly note that the development of the past conflicts, though related to the whole administration of Joint Stock Company St Petersburg as a whole and with the Russian state, was based on the workers’ strength conducted by the organisation in individual companies. In the first phase, during the insecure transitional period of the port management, the dockers’ organisations had always sought to find a solution within the framework of accepting the changes in port ownership. For the dockers the struggle in 1998 was not to act against privatisation, but to maintain benefits they had gained before the re-organisation of the port management. Even the state has some share in the Open JSC Seaport of St Petersburg, but the local RPD organisations rarely orient their direct strategy towards the responsibility of the Russian government. Moreover, the second phase of their struggle began once international trade started to recover around the region. The dockers wanted to see the real level of their wages protected by setting up a new mechanism for the wage system in the collective agreement. To achieve such goals, the local RPD union organisations have engaged in various struggle events to strengthen the union’s ability in collective bargaining. However, the strength of the RPD port organisation at Seaport of St Petersburg has been a case on its own, since RPD did not really play any specific role in the empowerment of the local port organisations’ struggle. The pattern of the port organisation, it seems, can be defined as one result of workplace unionism. We can also take such a characteristic into account to understand the basis of the Russian Trade Union of Dockers – this is probably why the local RPD activists themselves said that RPD means little more than a ‘flag’ for them. Generally, the dockers’ primary organisations do recognise the necessity of uniting under the representation of the port committee. The trade union committees also recognise the meaning of showing the solidarity message to each other. The coordinating ability of the port committee showed the activists’ making of a ‘broader’ collectivism in perceiving shared working conditions and the necessity for united actions. Benefiting from the active and well-disciplined participation of its members, the port committee and its union committees have been able to coordinate their actions and to make collective decisions. Nonetheless, there are three levels of organisational participation within the whole RPD port organisation. Firstly, those remaining in the centre are the union organisations of the three companies; slightly distant from the centre are the organisations at PKT and at Neva-Metall; then those vanished or failed groups. The connection among union organisations of different companies actually reflects the organisation network basis of workplace relations. Some of them simply prefer their own strategy with their own management policy. The PKT president highlights the necessity of investment in equipment modernisation which means that the PKT union committee mostly brings up the positive role of social partnership. Workers from Neva-Metall showed a rather distant relationship to the port organisation for it seemed their ‘progressive / tricky’ management needed their own response but not that suggested by the other three companies. Furthermore, if we generate an overview on activists’ presence in each company, it would show another fact, that we cannot find a strong organisational presence in every company. It seems the differences among RPD primary organisations reflect the difference of the immediate managements, and it is quite obvious the port committee did not yet extend its capacity over such differences as shown by the failure of organising new union organisations out of their own workplace, like the timber terminal workers who were not able to be organised (as they also failed to form new primary organisations in other areas within the port territory). However, the fragmentation of the workforce has been a regular issue for the trade union movement in every society. Even though the differences, or to say the weaknesses, do appear in the RPD port organisation, we still could note the benefit from the union and workplace combination. The interactions between members and the trade union committee at each company are not really distant since the chairperson of the shop committee is usually their brigade leader. It seems that the strength of the dockers at St Petersburg Seaport rather reflects the union’s efforts of internal coordination, and it somewhat depends on the balance sheet of the interactions between separate brigade collectives and the broader ‘port community’ created under the efforts of the union’s strategy. In this context an important feature is how people involved perceive their own development. The RPD activists’ optimism was a big surprise for me when I talked to them in the period of my fieldwork, at the time they believed a well-organised-and-coordinated port organisation will prevent any enormous blow to their work. Their confidence started to fade when facing the uncertain change of port ownership. When the collective action was taking place, the well-coordinated campaign and well-organised strike proved the port organisation was really powerful, on the one hand, but the fact that the capacity centred on the energy of workers of core companies exposed more the limits of active organisation and strategy, on the other hand. As we will see in more detail in the strike event presented in the next chapter, I will present more details about the impact of workplace relations on the practice of their mobilisation, their coordination and their definition of social partnership during the collective labour dispute. Chapter 5 St Petersburg dockers in 2004 and 2005: the union’s mobilisation for strike actions‘All of us know, that the Piter dockers represent a pioneer of the free trade union movement, and for today they are an example of active, determined trade unions, not only for other workers but also for employers’ (The director of Legal Consultation Centre of Labour Affairs ‘EGIDA’)114 The dispute in 2001 indicated the growing concern about real wages among dockworkers at the St Petersburg Seaport. The local RPD organisations had achieved temporary agreements with the employers. However, the fact the new Russian Federation Labour Code was coming into effect made local union activists believe their union had lost the privilege to affect their working conditions as they did before. The fight for a full guarantee of a collective agreement became the very method to maintain their conditions, their rights and their power. Realising the weakness of separate collective bargaining, the port committee believed that it was necessary to bring all primary organisations to work within a joint collective agreement project when facing their own employers. The unsuccessful bargaining conditions in PerStiKo, VSK, ChSK and PKT resulted in labour conflicts. The differential settlement provided opportunities for further analysis of the mobilisation, the networks, and more importantly, the development of these factors under the condition of port ‘collectives’. The understanding of the development will help to clarify the strength and prospect of the dockers’ collectivity, while the port organisation might have presented itself as a counter force to the original fragmentation of the workforce. The investigation of the disputes found that, although the fragmentation was less visible as a result of the efforts of the union’s successful mobilisation and solidarity making, it still existed and played a critical role in the pre-conflict situation. In concrete, in the docker-predominant workplaces, a professional ‘community’ was associated with strong union coordination. Still, the active united port organisation, though able to make a strong solidarity campaign based on the community, received little extension but operated on the basis of the main collectives. Brief review of the 2004-2005 strikeDespite the fact that the last collective agreement was signed in 2002, dockers at the St Petersburg Seaport started to complain that their real wages did not grow but were even lower than the standard in 2000. The port union organisations believed that was because the inflation compensation for their wages was not sufficient to cover the gap. The grievances among the workers grew stronger when they compared the wage level to the port performance since the growth of the cargo handling had increased and that meant that more intensive work had been carried out. According to the RPD port committee, the rate of their working norm was not calculated corresponding to their higher productive performance. In April 2004, the official negotiation round of the collective agreement for 2005-2008 was due to begin. The main demand from the workers’ side was to raise their wages by 40%, and this demand was expected to be added into several tariff-mechanism articles in the new collective agreement. The report of the RPD port committee stressed that since the new Russian Labour Code had come into effect, the strength of union organisation had been weakened and for the best protection for workers’ labour conditions they would now have to mainly rely on the content of the collective agreement. The dockers supported the port committee of RPD and believed it was the right time to make serious progress for better conditions for their duties. From the employers’ side, dockers at St Petersburg Seaport had received very good payment and there was no reason to introduce an extra pay rise. The trade union committees of the four stevedore companies all met difficulties during the period of collective bargaining, as workers’ demands were immediately rejected by the administrations of the stevedore companies. At the end, in four of the five main stevedore service companies, the RPD union committees and the companies failed to reach an agreement in the first instance. As a consequence of the failed negotiation, collective labour disputes started to arise. The first action from the dockers’ side was taken from June to September 2004. The labour dispute and the ‘strike’ action lasted for almost two months. The administration then agreed to reopen talks. Finally, a temporary compromise for both sides was reached. The compromise, however, only provided minor satisfaction of the dockers’ original demands. The main concern about the indexation of their wages was held over until a new negotiation took place the next year. In June 2005, a labour dispute, following similar demands to the 2004 dispute, once again occurred at the port after the failure of a new round of negotiations started in April. The disagreement between the two sides was still over the mechanism of wage indexation, but the union organisation’s status also came to be a new factor in the struggle between the two sides. Despite the confrontation and settlement the previous year, the dispute developed into a fiercer state. Both sides revealed tougher attitudes and preparations toward the solution of the critical conflict. The new port management, handling labour relations with the dockers for the first time, decided to go through the conflict with an uncompromising position. The general director of JSC Seaport of St Petersburg then made efforts to remove the leadership function of the RPD port committee. As a consequence, the dockers had for the first time to undertake a real indefinite strike at the port in the battle for a progressive collective agreement and union rights. More importantly, this was also the first time they had called an official strike since the new Russian Labour Code had come into force. In addition, local labour activists were stirred by the strike event, since such an event has not often been seen in the region. The local press described the situation that had developed as the very first time the dockers were not only using strike threats but were determined to carry out strike action to reach their demands. Following several dramatic events during the dispute period, the dispute officially ended with a guarantee to reach a comprise agreement. Noteworthily, the labour disputes in 2004 and 2005 should be seen as one single event with a long but linked process. The entire development of the 2004 dispute can firstly be seen as a test for both sides. Neither the employers nor the RPD union made crucial moves over the event which might provoke further conflict. Nonetheless, their restraint and the 2004 settlement only postponed the dispute, and the port committee had realised that they would be unlikely to avoid more serious industrial actions. Under the mild dispute atmosphere, the actions taken by both sides actually became the basis of the necessary understanding for their later action in the next year. The RPD activists also realised that any industrial action would be a decisive test of their practical coordination of union organisation-brigade relations. That was the main reason why more serious confrontation as well as more organised forms within the dockers’ industrial action developed. The analysis in this chapter is therefore to focus on the forms of RPD organisation and the participation among their members following the development of the strike events in 2005. 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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