Agency and institutional reform in
Russia, China and Vietnam:
Wither the trade unions?
Nuremberg Conference
8-9 October 2012
Tim Pringle
Transition to capitalist employment
relations
• Transition from state to capitalist/permanent to
contractual employment
• Transition from state welfare to social insurance
• Large lay-offs from SOEs – privatisation
• China and Vietnam: massive growth of private
and foreign-owned enterprises employing
migrant workers on low wages, short or no
contracts, long hours, poor health and safety
• Russia: deep depression 1989-98, uneven
recovery based on extractive industry since; FDI
mostly in consumer goods for domestic market
The challenge for trade unions
• Conflict of interest between workers and
employers – new role for trade unions
• Need to represent workers’ interests in
political processes
• Need to represent workers in negotiation
with employers
• Need to defend workers against bad
employers
Political role of ‘post-socialist’ trade unions
• Political role in all three countries is to administer state
functions and to preserve social peace
• Chinese and Vietnamese Party requires unions to
prevent strikes and social unrest
– by mediating between worker and employer
– by channelling disputes into bureaucratic and judicial channels
• Growing level of strikes in private sector in China and
Vietnam means pressure from Party
– to organise migrant workers
– to extend union organisation to POEs and FIEs
• Russian trade unions politically independent, but under
pressure from ruling party to maintain social peace.
Lower level of strikes and protests, so need to mobilise
members to achieve political influence
Legal Framework for unions
• Extensive protective labour legislation
• Provision for collective agreements
• Bureaucratic-legal dispute resolution
procedures
• Legally enforced monopoly trade unions
• Severely limited or no right to strike
• Public order legislation/policing
Weak workplace trade unions
• Workplace trade unions dominated by management,
perform management functions
• Union has almost no capacity to monitor and enforce
legislation and agreements or to represent or mobilise
workforce
• Workers have little confidence in their unions
• Exceptions in all three countries: depend on
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personality of union president,
strong labour market situation of workers,
demographic structure of workforce,
performance of enterprise,
Type of ownership
Position in global supply chain
Bureaucratic regulation of labour
relations
• Unions prefer lobbying for laws and
policies and legal-bureaucratic regulation
• Sectoral/local/regional agreements – need
for employers’ organisations; depend on
political support from state authorities
• Legal advice centres support the
resolution of individual disputes, less
effective for collective disputes
Bureaucratic regulation and worker
activism
• Limited effectiveness of bureaucratic-legal
representation
• Workers have limited capacity to organise or
mobilise, little confidence in unions
• Workers act through illegal strikes and protests –
collective bargaining by riot
• Symbiosis of bureaucratic representation and
workers’ self-organisation
• Need to integrate workers into trade union
through active and effective workplace
organisation
Harmonious workplace unions
• Harmonious labour relations only possible
where workplace trade union represents
the union members and provides channels
for representation/negotiation/bargaining
• Effective workplace unions presuppose:
– Collective labour dispute procedures,
including the right to strike
– Freedom of workers’ to organise themselves
Who has the most strikes?
• China: no right to strike;
limited channels for legal
resolution of collective
disputes
• Vietnam: right to strike,
only following slow and
complicated bureaucratic
procedure, no legal
strikes
• Russia: strikes legal,
following exhaustion of
procedure for resolution
of collective labour
disputes
Official
number of
strikes
2006
2007
Russia
8
7
Vietnam 387
540
China
????
????
Resolving collective labour
disputes in Russia
• Collective labour disputes arise regarding
negotiation or terms of collective agreements
• Demands put forward by union or majority vote
of a meeting of workers
• Conciliation – arbitration – strike
• Strike must be supported by majority of the
labour force
• Registration of a collective labour dispute
usually sufficient to persuade employer to settle
Freedom of association - Russia
• 1990 TU Law gave equal rights to any trade union –
proliferation of small alternative trade unions, especially
sectional unions, encouraged by US funding
• 2001 Labour Code gave majority trade union in each
workplace monopoly representation rights, weakened
alternative unions
• Gives workers capacity to by-pass management-dominated
union
• Gives workplace union capacity to break with ineffective
sectoral union
• ‘In general the existence of the alternative trade unions is
even helpful. Competition does not allow us to stagnate’
Mikhail Shmakov FNPR President
• Alternative unions significant as a force for change rather than
as replacement of traditional unions
Effective workplace unions
• Creating representative workplace unions
– Election of trade union representatives
– Widening participation in the union
• Professionalisation of trade union officers
– Training of workplace trade union officers
– Trade union career path: salaries and promotion
• Technical support for workplace trade unions:
– Legal advice and representation
– Support for collective bargaining
– Inspections
Trade union elections
• Necessary but not sufficient condition for change
• Means of removing the most ineffective leaders
• Management and existing leadership can easily control
elections: difficulty of alternative candidates emerging
• Widening participation in union provides space for
candidates to prove themselves
• Build union from the base: teams and shops
• Need appropriate pay, conditions and status for trade
union officers at each level
• Reconcile trade union elections and Party leadership
within framework of trade union structures.
Professionalising the union
• Trade union identification with management in
command economies was embedded in the pay,
status and careers of trade union officers
• In a market economy trade union officers are
professional representatives of workers
• Trade unions need new pay scales, professional
training and career opportunities appropriate to
their new role
• Trade union officers should be paid by the
union, not by management
• Cost is a matter of trade union priorities
Supporting the workplace union
• Russia Regional committees:
– Provide information/documentation
– Provide link to and lobby local
administration/inspectorates/political bodies
– Provide legal advice and representation
– Negotiate regional agreements
– Support collective bargaining
– Provide training, consultation meetings
– Organise coordinated campaigns
Supporting the workplace union
• Vietnam
– Short training courses for primary level cadres making
use of ILO and support from foreign unions
– Legal advice and education initiatives, including
pressurising employers to allow workers and union
officials to take part
– Work with government departments and primary
unions on inspections
– Strike taskforces to assist in workplace wage
negotiations
– VGCL criticises government for delay in increasing
minimum wage, wins increases
Organising the unorganised
• Most difficult task for trade unions around the
world especially in an environment of
globalisation and informalisation.
• Vietnam: Two stage process
– Provisional committee organised from above
– Election of standing committee after 6 months
• Russia: Construction workers
– Create a local union of construction workers
independent of workplace, acts as employment
agency
Conclusion - priority tasks of union
• Strengthen workplace unions
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Protect trade union officers
Professionalise union officers
Develop workplace organisation
Support workplace trade unions:
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Training
Advice
Support in bargaining
Support workers in dispute
• ‘Workers of all countries unite’