R000237863 The Development of Trade Unionism in Russia – Final Report 22
R000237863
The Development of Trade Unionism in Russia
1. Summary of Research Results
The project was carried out almost exactly in accordance with the work programme described in the original proposal and the original aims and objectives were achieved. Supplementary funding from INTAS made it possible to realise the original ambition of researching the development of trade unions in nine regions, despite the reduction in the ESRC award. The research monitored the development of trade unionism in Russia at three levels: the enterprise, the region and the federal level.
Trade union activity in the enterprise was studied directly through the conduct of 76 enterprise case studies. These were predominantly enterprises in which there was overt conflict, but also included enterprises in which a trade union organisation had been liquidated or in which a new trade union organisation was established and a number of case studies of trade union activity in foreign-owned enterprises. Our concern in studying industrial conflict was to identify the extent to which conflict-resolution was being institutionalised, and in particular to identify the role of the trade union in conflict. In general, we found that conflict was not institutionalised. Most industrial action was spontaneous and was not channelled into trade union structures, indeed was usually opposed by the enterprise trade union. This meant that, where conflict arose, it tended to be endemic. On the rare occasions in which the trade union became a party to the dispute, it would never confront the employer directly, but would usually attempt to divert the dispute into bureaucratic channels of conciliation and arbitration and/or into individual legal actions and would usually appeal for the support of regional trade union bodies, expecting the latter in turn to appeal to regional political authorities to exert pressure on the employer to settle. Such actions only very rarely led to a resolution of the dispute. The overall conclusion was that, as in the past, conflict is potentially endemic in Russian enterprises, but the continued collaboration of the trade union with management is usually sufficient to suppress overt conflict and to isolate militant groups of workers. For this reason, there is much less pressure on the trade unions for change from below than we had originally anticipated.
Cases of conflict are very much the exception in Russian enterprises and organisations. In order to identify what primary trade union organisations actually do in more normal circumstances we conducted a survey of the presidents of the primary trade union organisations of the branch trade unions studied in all nine regions in which we conducted the research (the survey was funded by ICFTU). The results of this survey confirmed our impression, and the findings of other researchers, that the primary trade union organisation continues to identify closely with management, to be strongly averse to conflict, and to see its primary role as being to administer the social and welfare apparatus of the enterprise. These findings were confirmed by an annual survey of the employees of nine enterprises in three regions (funded by FTUI), which confirmed that workers have little involvement in or identification with the trade union and look to management rather than the union to solve their problems.
The main focus of the research was the activity of regional trade union organisations. The activities of three regional branch trade union committees and the trade union federation were monitored in each region over a period of two years, using the full range of qualitative research methods. This allowed us to build up a very complete picture of the activities of and interaction between the different levels of the trade union organisation and their relations with the local authorities and local employers’ associations. The breadth of the research enabled us to identify common themes and significant differences between different regions and between different branch trade unions (particularly between public sector and industrial unions). The research identified high levels of tension and mutual recrimination between different levels of trade union organisation which was interwoven with competition for financial resources, but was underpinned by the different strategic perspectives and functional priorities of the different levels of the trade union. While enterprise trade unions are preoccupied with their social and welfare functions and regional federations have embedded themselves in structures of regional social partnership, regional branch trade union organisations have lost most of their former functions and resources and are struggling to find a role.
Our research at the federal level concentrated on the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia and the mining-metallurgical, coal-mining, health workers’ and chemical workers’ unions. While the branch trade unions are preoccupied with negotiating branch tariff agreements, usually with the relevant government bodies in the absence of powerful employers’ associations, and participating in bureaucratic state regulatory structures, FNPR has sought to give political direction to the trade union movement and to use its authority to secure gains for the trade unions and their members by pressuring the government and lobbying in the duma. In order to chart this activity we made special studies of the participation of the trade unions in the 1999 duma and 2000 presidential elections and of the trade union campaigns over the Unified Social Tax and the new Labour Code. We also monitored trade union activities in the run-up to the IVth Congress of FNPR in November 2001.
The most significant outcome of the research has been to provide a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the forms and characteristics of trade unionism in Russia from shop-floor to federal level. Despite the fact that the traditional trade unions are by far the largest civil society organisations in Russia and still represent the majority of the labour force, they have been very largely ignored in studies of post-Soviet politics and society. There has been no systematic research on trade unions in post-Soviet Russia, and no research at all since the middle of the 1990s. One finding of our research has been that the trade unions have played a neglected but very important role in the consolidation of democratic institutions in Russia (which is by no means the same thing as democracy) and in the stabilisation of post-Soviet Russian society, but that it is arguable that this has been at the expense of performing their proper trade union functions of defending their members in the transition to a market economy.
The findings of the research have been made available to other researchers by posting a full set of research reports on the project website. The research has been conducted in close collaboration with Russian and international trade union and labour organisations and findings have been made available through participation in seminars, conferences and trade union training programmes and through briefing documents. Simon Clarke and Sarah Ashwin have completed a book which provides an overview of trade unions and industrial relations in post-soviet Russia, and we have published a collective volume in Russian which has been widely circulated and has provoked considerable debate in the Russian trade union movement. Further publications are in preparation.
2. R000237863 The Development of Trade Unionism in Russia – Full Report of Research Activities and Results
Background
The project grew out of our previous research on trade unions and industrial relations in Russia, but most particularly out of our collaboration with the Russian trade unions and international trade union and labour organisations in the international campaign over the non-payment of wages in Russia, which we co-ordinated on behalf of the ILO and the ICFTU in 1997. It was clear to us that a major barrier to the effective reform of the Russian trade unions and to effective international trade union collaboration was the fact that very little was known, not only by foreign trade unionists but even by the national officials of the Russian unions, about what Russian trade unions actually did.
Our own research at enterprise and regional levels had already led us to formulate the underlying hypothesis of the research: that the decentralisation of the trade unions following the collapse of the soviet system had left each level of the trade union organisation more or less independently to find its own place in the emerging socio-economic system, and that each level had developed in a rather different direction, with important consequences for the diminishing unity and coherence of the trade union movement as a whole. This defined the analytical focus of the research: co-operation and conflict between different levels of the trade union organisation in the definition and realisation of their functions.
The ESRC grant for the project was for £100,000 less than we had originally applied for, and this meant that we had to trim some of the research programme. However, we were fortunate to secure parallel funding of 60,000 ECU from INTAS, which enabled us to cover some of the shortfall and maintain the original intention of covering trade union organisation in nine regions (Moscow and Saint Petersburg cities, Leningrad, Ulyanovsk, Samara, Perm’, Sverdlovsk and Kemerovo oblasts and the Komi Republic). We later secured funding from ICFTU to conduct a survey of presidents of primary trade union organisations, which filled an important gap in the research, and the Free Trade Union Institute commissioned us to monitor and survey the employees of nine enterprises in three regions, which gave us survey data on the relation of ordinary members to their trade unions. The main impact of the reduction of the budget was that we reduced the planned number of case studies and the input of Veronika Kabalina and Vadim Borisov was reduced to 40% time, and the funded research leave was reduced to one term for Sarah Ashwin.
An initial problem that faced the project was that Vadim Borisov was invited to serve as the ICFTU representative in Russia (and later in the CIS countries). Vadim offered to resign his position, but after some discussion with him and the ICFTU it was agreed that he could combine the two jobs, continuing to take responsibility for directing the project, while subcontracting some of the fieldwork at the federal level to other researchers working under his supervision. This arrangement has worked very well, and Vadim’s position at the heart of the Russian trade union movement has been invaluable to the research and to the dissemination of our findings.
In the structure of the project, Simon Clarke was responsible for directing the project as a whole; Vadim Borisov was responsible for research at the Federal level, for securing and maintaining access to trade union organisations and for co-ordinating the research with international trade union and labour organisations; Veronika Kabalina was responsible for the research on the Moscow Federation of Trade Unions and for the day-to-day co-ordination of the fieldwork by the various regional groups. Simon Clarke and Sarah Ashwin closely monitored the conduct of the fieldwork, reading through and commenting on all interview transcripts, fieldwork reports and drafts of analytical papers and leading the regular meetings and conferences, but in general did not participate directly in the fieldwork, except that Simon Clarke regularly monitored internet sources and trade union documentation and Sarah Ashwin spent two weeks in Moscow in the summer of 2001 interviewing senior trade union officers. Our original plan had been for the four principals to concentrate on writing up in the final year of the project, but we were able to vire funds and tap other resources to allow all of the most active researchers to participate in the final analysis and writing up, under our supervision.
Objectives
We have adhered quite closely to the original objectives. Below we enumerate the objectives and indicate the ways in which they have been achieved.
1) To investigate developments in the form and character of trade union activity at enterprise, regional and national levels in contemporary Russia.
This was the principal focus of the fieldwork. It was realised in the conduct of 76 enterprise case studies; a survey of 4,700 presidents of primary trade union organisations; annual monitoring and a survey of employees of nine enterprises; production and regular updating of reports on the activities of 24 regional branch trade union committees, 8 regional trade union federations (St Petersburg and Leningrad are covered by a single federation), four branch trade unions at federal level and the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR).
2) To identify the extent to which developments at these three distinct levels are consistent with one another and to determine the impact of these developments on the institutional relations between the corresponding levels of trade union organisation.
This was the principal focus of the analytical phase of the research and was generally the central theme of analytical papers developed on various substantive topics by participants in the project. It has also been the central focus of the critique of the strategic perspective of FNPR that has emerged from the project, provoking considerable debate in the Russian trade union movement.
3) To assess the implications for the future role and development of trade unions and industrial relations in Russia at these various levels.
This has been the principal focus of interaction between the project and the Russian trade union movement, through participation of project members in trade union conferences, seminars and training programmes. We have been very active in supporting the development of a network of young trade unionists in Russia, which has been acknowledged as a priority by FNPR and is now integrated into a wider network, co-ordinated by ICFTU, embracing all the Central and East European countries.