International Centre for Trade Union Rights

Unions respond to Yeltsin coup and attacks on rightsAuthor(s): Nick WrightSource: International Union Rights, Vol. 1, No. 5, The right to organise (Third Quarter 1993),pp. 23-24Published by: International Centre for Trade Union RightsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41936980 .

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Nick Wright edits the International Union Rights journal

RUSSIAO CONGRESS REPORT

Unions respond to

Yeltsin coup and

attacks on rights

RUSSIA'S Yeltsin's ordinary

TRADE congress coup-d'etat.

unions following

Faced

have President met

with

in

unpre-

extra- Boris

RUSSIA'S ordinary congress following President Boris Yeltsin's coup-d'etat. Faced with unpre-

cedented attacks on trade union rights the fifty million strong Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia met on October 28 in the after- math of bloody clashes in Moscow.

Russian trade unions, the overwhelming majority or- ganised in FITUR, face enor- mous difficulties in the new situation. FITUR and its affil- iates provide a strong link of continuity with the earlier So- viet trade unions - but the Yeltsin regime has begun to strip them of many of their traditional functions includ- ing the administration of the country's extensive social se- curity network.

The response of the feder- ations leading bodies has been to redefine their role more narrowly - limiting the functioning of the central bodies to administrative mat- ters and downgrading policy decisions to the status of recommendations.

FITUR's new acting chair, Moscow Federation of Trade Unions leader Mikhail Shmakov said the methods of the former leadership - "direct press- ure on the government" had failed. Trade unions, he said, should not reject all forms of collective action. However, it was "probably more effective to concentrate on honest, businesslike negotia- tions and on honestly carrying out agreement reached."

Shmakov redefined the unions' role in terms of specifically economic goals. Unions should fight for "a social order in which workers participate in deciding the conditions of their labour and its payment, in determining the future of enter- prises, in shaping government economic policy and in providing social benefits" he said.

Since its foundation in 1990 FITUR - which counts on the continued adherence of most Rus- sian trade union members, functionaries and ac- tivists - has been struggling with the hitherto unfamiliar problems of a market economy.

Summer saw an outbreak of strike action as workers began to protest against mounting clo-

increasingly employers, private

and state, and

government began to circumvent the

official Tripartite Commission, ignoring

rulings and undermine workers

rights at the

workplace.

sures and unemployment. A particular problem has been the failure of employers to pay wages - a consequence of the monetarist policies and anti- inflation strategies pursued by free market ideo- logues in the finance ministry. In Russian condition, with runaway inflation, any delay in the payment of wages amounts to legalised rob-

bery. Workers spend their pay as soon as it is received. Sav- ings have been wiped out. Most workers exist below the income level necessary to maintain and reproduce their previously existing standards of living. Pensioners in par- ticular face a catastrophic drop in living standards.

By September over 1,200,000 workers had taken action, including demonstra- tions, strikes and protests.

In deference to Interna- tional Labour Organisation conventions the Yeltsin regime sanctioned the conti- nued existence of formal tri- partite machinery involving

state, employers and workers organisations. But increasingly employers, both private sector and state, and the government itself began to circum- vent the official Tripartite Commission, ignoring rulings and undermining worker's rights at the workplace.

In co-operation with industrial branch leader- ships and regional organisations drew up a Col- lective Action programme, planned to reach a crescendo in October.

Yeltsin's dissolution of parliament intervened. FITUR's response was firmly in conformity with its developing strategy - imposed by necessity - of political intervention.

On 22 September they condemned Yeltin's ac- tion as a "state coup- d'etat", called on workers to "express with all possible means, including strikes" their opposition and called for simulta- neous elections to the Supreme Soviet and for the Presidency.

"The trade unions do not aspire to political power" said FITUR "but they cannot accept infringe- ment on constitutional rights and liberties because it will inevitably involve a chain of violations of working people's socio-economic rights." ^

Nothing stands

still in Russia.

Workers and

their trade

unions are

having to adapt

to new threats

to their rights. Nick Wright

reports on how

the Russian

unions are

facing life after

the coup.

Page 23 THIRD QUARTER 1993 INTERNATIONAL UNION RIGHTS

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FITUR's opposition to Yeltsin's attack on parlia- ment -"...it paves the way for the establishment of a regime of personal power" - angered the Presi- dent and his supporters. Yeltsin's deputy prime minister ordered the phones cut off.

A week after their first declaration an extended FITUR plenum endorsed the leadership's first re- sponse. Within hours a presidential decree ended union direction over welfare, disability and holi- day funds. Regional trade union organisations began to report arbitrary attacks on their role and bureaucratic intervention in internal union af- fairs. Newspapers were suppressed and assets, in- cluding buildings, seized.

The government began to make threatening noises about check-off, the system of automatic deduction of union subscriptions from wages.

In the period following the Moscow armed clashes some supporters of the President suppor- ters began calling for the dissolution of FITUR and the confiscation of its property.

Under this pressure the balance of opinion within FITUR changed. Igor Klochkov - who had devised the Plan of Collective Action and was publicly quoted as calling for workers to defend parliament - resigned as the chair of the feder- ation.

Tentative electoral plans, in alliance with the Russian Union of Labour and other labour and social democratic groups have been shelved.

The congress rejected a proposal to change the organisation's name to the All-Russian Confeder- ation of Labour but endorsed plans to narrow the aims and objectives contained in its Charter and limit the policy making power of FITUR's central leadership.

Shmakov was confirmed as the organisation's new chair by unanimous vote. Regional and re- publican union leaderships were asked to inter- vene in the December elections by backing party lists which include union representatives and which back trade union demands. □

RUSSIA □ REPORT

What the

Russian trade

unions said

Statement by the Executive Committee of the Federation of

Independent Trade Unions of Russia

Information reaching the Council of the FITUR and the opinions of branch and regional centres of the FITUR about the increasing opposition in society after the publication of the Presidential decree of 21 September, and following the resolution by the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation and the Congress of People's Deputies, testify to the enormous anxiety over the date of Russia and support to possible measures for overcoming the political crisis proposed by the Chairman of the Constitutional Court. The Executive Committee of the FITUR considers that the settlement of this most acute political crisis, which has brought Russia to the brink of disunity and bloodshed, is possible only through the simultaneous Supreme Council and Presidential elections on constitutional lines, and appeals: □ to President Yeltsin to cancel the decree of 21 September and restore the validity of the Constitution in full; □ to the Congress of People's Deputies to issue the Election Law and the Law on State Institutions for a transitional period until the new Constitution is adopted, to set the date for Simultaneous Supreme Council and Presidential elections, not later than February 1994, and to adopt a decision on self-dissolution. After these suggested decisions have beeb adopted, the Supreme Council should suspend its law-making activities and guarantee observance of the law during preparations for the elections and during the elections. The Government of the Russian Federation, in cooperation with the enterprises and trade unions, should concentrate on practical work in the economy and on the solution of existing acute social and economic problems. If the branches of power reach an agreement on the basis of these suggestions, the trade unions are ready to make a positive contribution to the stabilisation of the situation in the country, and to call on worker collectives to show tolerance and refrain from mass collective actions during this period.

24 September

INTERNATIONAL UNION RIGHTS Page 24 THIRD QUARTER 1993

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