R000237863 The Development of Trade Unionism in Russia – Final Report
R000237863
The Development of Trade Unionism in Russia
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R000237863 The Development of Trade Unionism in Russia – Final Report
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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 conflictresolution 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’
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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 postSoviet 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.
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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 socioeconomic 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: cooperation 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.
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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.
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4) To contribute to wider debates about the role of trade unions in the transition
countries and to the major review of trade unionism in the new millenium being
co-ordinated by the International Institute for Labour Studies of the ILO.
We have maintained regular collaboration with researchers and trade unionists in
Central and Eastern Europe, particularly regarding the industrial relations
implications of EU accession, through email exchanges, participation in seminars
and conferences and participation in the ICFTU’s Central and East European
Committee. We also built up a close working relationship with researchers in and
on the Chinese trade unions. We had originally been asked to co-ordinate a
component on transition countries for the IILS project, but the latter project was
eventually scaled down and focused on a small number of country case studies,
which included only Lithuania among the transition countries. Although we
maintained our links with the IILS project, the narrowing of its scope left little
space for our active participation.
5) To provide research support to initiatives of international trade union and labour
organisations, the Know How Fund and the TACIS Democracy Programme aimed
at the strengthening of civil society and democratic participation in Russia.
Interaction with international trade union and labour organisations was greatly
facilitated by Vadim Borisov’s appointment as ICFTU representative for the CIS
countries and, subsequently, by his appointment as Director of the NIS component
of the programme ‘Setting up a trade union rights monitoring network and
building co-operation between trade union organisations in CEEC and NIS’ which
is funded by the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights through
the ICFTU. This meant that the research provided direct input into the programme
of trade union seminars organised on behalf of the ICFTU and the EU programme
as well as informing the regular reports on trade union activity circulated through
the ICFTU to all its national affiliates. Research support and information was
similarly provided to the representatives of the ITSs active in Russia, particularly
IUF, ICEM and PSI. The Know-How Fund (latterly DfID), has never been
convinced of the importance of trade unions and attempts to secure DfID funding
for a collaborative project involving UNISON and the Russian health workers’
union produced nothing but empty promises. However, we have got funding from
the British Council, under the DISPS2 programme, for an ‘exchange of experience
in the training of young trade union activists in Russia and Britain’ in collaboration
with the TUC’s Organising Academy.
Methods
We have followed the work programme contained in the original proposal very
closely, monitoring trade union organisations at the different levels and focusing
especially on key areas such as the annual negotiation of branch tariff and regional
agreements, the organisation of national days of trade union action (the campaigns
against the Unified Social Tax and the new Labour Code) and the involvement of the
trade unions in elections.
Access
The research depended on the collaboration of the relevant trade union bodies at all
levels. On the basis of our previous collaboration with FNPR, the FNPR President,
Mikhail Shmakov, agreed to write to the presidents of all of the relevant branch and
regional trade union organisations asking them to give us full co-operation and
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unrestricted access. Despite the abandonment of democratic centralism, hierarchical
traditions remain in place and these letters (once we had reminded Shmakov a few
times actually to send them) immediately gave our research teams virtually unlimited
access, except for the Ulyanovsk regional organisation of the education union and in
Moscow City, where the Moscow Federation is jealous of its independence. We
eventually secured good access to the Moscow health, construction and chemical
workers’ unions, but access to the apparatus of the Moscow Federation itself was
always more restricted and we had to rely more heavily on documentary sources and
informal contacts. We also had a problem with the chemical workers’ union for a few
months, following the tragic death of the president during the union’s congress. The
new president was very antagonistic to the research and withdrew all co-operation,
ordering the regional organisations to do likewise, and lobbying against the project
among other union leaders. Fortunately the project was already well established by
that stage, and even his own regional union leaders ignored his instructions and
continued to collaborate with the project. When he was removed from office after a
few months, normal relations with the chemical workers’ union were resumed.
In general, the only areas that were closed to us, as to everybody else, were the details
of trade union finance and property transactions.
Enterprise case studies
We had proposed to explore the interaction between primary and regional trade union
organisations through case studies of conflicts in enterprises and organisations, the
original hypothesis being that conflict arising at enterprise level would put pressure on
the attempts of the regional trade union organisations to present themselves as
guarantors of social peace. However, the level of overt industrial conflict in Russia
has fallen to such low levels (for example, not one ‘collective labour dispute’ has been
officially recorded in Moscow, or even in ‘hot’ Kuzbass, since the research began)
that it was very difficult even to find suitable objects of case study. We therefore
broadened the scope of our case studies, which eventually included not only
enterprises in which there was overt conflict, but also cases in which management had
expelled the trade union, in which a new trade union organisation had been formed, in
which there were both traditional and alternative union organisations, and we made a
series of case studies of the role of the trade union in foreign-owned enterprises,
usually in collaboration with the relevant ITS. We found that the low level of conflict,
and the very limited involvement of the trade union even in such conflicts as did take
place, meant that the enterprise case studies did not provide a very complete picture of
the relations between primary and regional trade union organisations.
Survey of trade union presidents
In order to get fuller information about the activity of primary trade union groups and
their relations with regional organisations we decided to conduct a survey of
presidents of primary organisations in all the branch trade unions researched in each
region, a total sample of 4,700. The survey was supported by FNPR and financed by
ICFTU and was conducted in May 2001. We also secured funding from the AFL-CIO
sponsored Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI) for a complementary project on the
relation between alternative and traditional trade unions, based on enterprise surveys
and case studies, in Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg and Voronezh.
A small working group was responsible for the design and piloting of the
questionnaire for the survey of trade union presidents, circulating drafts around the
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research groups for comment and submitting the final version for approval to the
regional branch trade union organisations (there were no objections, although the
education union in Ulyanovsk refused to participate in the survey; the president of the
Samara chemical workers also refused to collaborate, but we managed to interview 26
of the 30 presidents of chemical enterprise unions independently). We decided to
survey all the presidents of primary organisations in all the relevant trade unions,
except in the case of the public sector unions (health and education) in four regions in
which the relevant union had more than 500 primary groups, where we drew samples
stratified by branch size and urban-rural location.
A much bigger problem than questionnaire design or sampling was that of the
unbiased administration of the questionnaire. The ideal would be to interview trade
union presidents individually, but it was impossible to travel around the regions
visiting all the towns and villages, so such interviewing would have to be at regional
trade union meetings, which tend to be attended by the more active presidents. In
practice we decided to combine methods, and code the method that had been used.
Those who attended regional trade union meetings were interviewed or given the
questionnaire for self-completion at the meeting, those who did not attend the
meetings were sent the questionnaire either through trade union channels of
distribution or through the post. Some non-respondents were followed up by
telephone call and personal visit, though generally only in the regional capital. With a
few exceptions, the final response rate was pretty good at almost 40%, although the
sample is probably still biased towards the larger and more active trade union
organisations.
Case studies of regional trade union organisations
The methods used in the case studies were the normal methods of qualitative research:
extended interviews with key informants, shadowing trade union officers, observation
at meetings, conferences, demonstrations etc., documentary and archival research. We
stressed to our research teams the need to seek precise information (Who? What?
Where? When?) rather than more general statements about trade union activities and
to secure independent corroboration of the claims made by trade unionists regarding
their activities and achievements, many of which turned out to be unsubstantiated.
One great advantage of following the trade unions through a two-year cycle of activity
was that the researchers could establish their credentials and get the confidence of
their informants, opening much greater access to reliable information and eliciting
much more frankness in ‘off-the-record’ discussions. The problem with such sources
is that the information is undocumented and is often given in confidence and so
cannot be cited in published reports.
In addition to the case study research, each regional group was asked to maintain two
databases, one on labour conflicts in the region, to be maintained using press and
other sources, and one an archive of documentary materials. Simon Clarke created
standardised data entry forms for each Access database. This was not very successful.
Most groups found the work very laborious, with very little useful result, and
circulation of the databases was difficult because the files were too enormous, even
when compressed, to navigate the Russian email systems. Three groups continued to
maintain their data bases, but the others dropped them after a while.
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Case studies of trade union organisations at the federal level
Trade union organisations at the federal level are even more bureaucratic than at
lower levels and most of the monitoring of their activity involves monitoring their
congresses and executive meetings and the activity of their functional departments.
The federal organisations are even more closed than those at regional level, with
everybody being reluctant to divulge any information without the express
authorisation of the president. With the partial exception of the chemical workers’
union, mentioned above, we established very good relations with the presidents of the
unions on which we focused at federal level, but we learnt more about the real
activities (and the latent tensions) in the trade unions at federal level from our regional
informants than from our studies of the national trade union apparatus. Much of the
most useful information came from confidential discussions and so is unattributable.
Co-ordination
With a very large research team and a potentially enormous research field it was
essential to keep the research focused on the central issues and, as far as possible, to
derive comparable data from all the trade union organisations studied. The formal
structure through which co-ordination was maintained was a meeting of team leaders
every three months, with an annual seminar involving all the researchers on the
project. At the first meeting of team leaders a work programme for the regional
groups was discussed and agreed, which included specification of the topics which
must be covered by the researchers and a mandatory structure for reports on regional
trade union organisations. Once the research was under way, research groups updated
and revised their research reports and submitted new case study reports every three
months and circulated them to all the other groups in advance of the team leaders’
meeting. Simon Clarke and Sarah Ashwin reviewed the reports every three months,
identifying omissions and points requiring clarification or further research. At the
team leaders’ meeting, hypotheses would be put forward and suggestions discussed
for extending the research and modifying the work programme or the report structure
to ensure that we had the data necessary for the evaluation of such hypotheses.
Data analysis
We used the methods of collaborative data analysis developed over previous projects,
according to which all the researchers active in the project participate in the data
analysis, with intensive input and support from the senior researchers. Six-months
before the annual project seminar, each active researcher on the project circulated an
abstract of an analytical paper for presentation to the seminar. The abstracts were
reviewed and approved or modified by Simon Clarke and Sarah Ashwin and all
groups were asked to identify relevant research materials from their own regions
relevant to the papers being proposed. The papers were pre-circulated and discussed
in great detail at the seminar, before being further revised and subjected to editorial
comments with a view to publication. In general this worked very well, except that
groups were not very good at going out of their way to find materials for their
colleagues (although the standardised format of the reports made it much easier to
access material already in the reports). We therefore decided to encourage our
colleagues to code transcripts of the most significant interviews in a qualitative data
analysis package (ATLAS.ti), which is best adapted to collective working and can
handle Cyrillic texts, so that the primary data would be readily available to all the
researchers in the project (and more generally, through our website). In all, five
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groups coded 250 (out of well over 1,000) transcripts and the materials were
consolidated into a single database. In total, members of the project completed a total
of 62 analytical papers on the basis of this procedure, all being of a very high quality
and drawing on the research materials and research experience of the project as a
whole.
Results
The initial hypotheses guiding the research have been amply confirmed, although the
situation is rather more complex and the role of workplace conflict rather less than we
had anticipated. The trade union organisations at federal, regional and enterprise
levels have been developing in different directions, with different priorities, so that
co-ordination between the levels has been breaking down. This is manifested, for
example, in the failure of many regional trade union organisations to pay more than
lip-service to calls from the centre for mobilisation for days of action or for support
for the trade unions’ electoral programme, and by the virtual complete lack of
participation in such activities by ordinary members. It is similarly manifested in the
failure of primary trade union organisations to remit dues to their regional branch
trade union organisations and of the latter to remit dues to higher levels of the trade
union structure.
The FNPR leadership has interpreted all of these phenomena as manifestations of a
breakdown of trade union discipline following the abandonment of democratic
centralism and the solution is seen to lie in a strengthening of hierarchical authority.
However, our research shows clearly that it arises because the trade union means quite
different things to different people at different levels. In particular, the commitment of
the trade union leadership to a corporatist strategy of ‘social partnership’ has nothing
to offer the ordinary members and, indeed, leads the trade union apparatus actively to
oppose any rank-and-file trade union initiatives. On the other hand, the attempt of the
leadership to constitute the trade unions as the core of a Centre-Left opposition
founders on the diverse commitments of branch and regional trade union leaders and
on the fact that the mass of members still look to the trade union not for protection but
for social and welfare benefits. The strategy of the trade union apparatus in transition
has been a very conservative strategy of seeking primarily to preserve itself
institutionally by preserving its property and its legal rights and privileges and
retaining or restoring the trade unions’ traditional functions. This strategy has been
welcomed by parts of the state apparatus, particularly at regional level, which is able
to use the trade unions as a means of reconstituting traditional forms of administrative
power that had been destroyed with the collapse of the Communist Party.
The trade unions are by no means monolithic – there are many cracks, tensions and
overt conflicts which introduce some pressures for change, but whether the trade
unions will be able to respond to these pressures remains to be seen.
The findings of our project are very controversial in the Russian trade union
movement, and we have considered Russian publication of the findings and their
dissemination through trade union seminars and conferences to be our main priority.
Simon Clarke and Sarah Ashwin have accordingly spent most of their time
monitoring the production and presentation of the research materials and working
intensively with their Russian colleagues on the development of their own papers for
publication. A collection of papers was prepared for publication, with the financial
support of ICFTU, in preparation for the IVth Congress of FNPR in November 2001.
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Although the papers tended to be very critical of FNPR, the FNPR President, Mikhail
Shmakov, agreed to write a Foreword to the book and to distribute the book to all
1500 delegates and guests to the Congress (when the pre-publication draft of the book
was first circulated, the Acting President of the chemical workers’ union telephoned
M.V. Tarasenko, President of the Mining-Metallurgical Workers’ Union, to warn him
that his union had been viciously attacked. Tarasenko asked Vadim for a copy of the
book, and later called back to get the telephone number of the young author of the
offending paper, who was surprised to be woken early the next morning by a call from
Tarasenko congratulating him on his critical but objective and very important
contribution). As it became clear that the leadership would come under sharp attack
from the floor of the Congress, the proposal to distribute the book to delegates was
withdrawn, although the book was subsequently distributed to all branch and regional
FNPR affiliates and the first print run of 2000 copies was sold out within weeks.
Simon and Sarah had intended to write a general book on Trade Unions and Industrial
Relations in Russia during the first half of the project, before turning to more detailed
writing later, but so much new material was emerging in the course of the project that
we decided that the book would need to draw on the findings of the project as a
whole. Completion of the manuscript was further delayed to be able to include the
IVth FNPR Congress in November and the adoption of the new Labour Code in
December 2001. All of the project papers and materials are available on the project
website, where they are frequently accessed by specialists in the field.
Activities
Most of the regular research activities have been discussed above. The annual
conferences have been very important events in the life of the project, allowing the
researchers to spend a week together in a congenial (though cheap) environment (in
Sochi, Albena (Bulgaria) and Alanya (Turkey)) formulating and debating their
hypotheses, exchanging ideas, discussing their papers in working groups and plenary
sessions.
Many of the participants in the project have been very active in presenting their
findings to trade union seminars and conferences. Most regional groups made regular
reports on the research to their regional trade union federations and regional branch
union committees and provided regular informal consultation and advice. All of the
regional branch trade unions were provided with reports on the results of our survey
of trade union presidents, which attracted a great deal of interest. In some regions the
researchers were formally invited to participate as experts in conferences of both the
official and alternative trade unions (on the new Labour Code – Ekaterinburg,
Samara, Kemerovo; problems of young people – Ekaterinburg, Perm’; trade union
membership – Samara, Perm’; training – Samara; trade union organisation – Perm’;
social partnership – Kemerovo, Samara; labour conflict – Kemerovo) and to
participate in trade union training programmes on such themes as social partnership,
relations between primary and regional branch trade union organisations, trade union
motivation, wage bargaining, the role of trade unions in conflict situations, trade
union training. The Kemerovo group provided training for the trade union
organisations of a number of more active enterprises, including a full 30-hour training
programme for the giant KMK metallurgical complex. The Kemerovo and Samara
groups provided training and consultation for the regional Labour Department and the
Kemerovo group for the Western Siberian regional office of the Ministry of Labour
on issues of conflict resolution. The Perm group was involved in advising and training
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labour mediators and arbitrators. In Samara, the regional trade union federation used
the research findings to make proposals to the FNPR IVth Congress for reforms in the
system of trade union reporting, and the research group was invited to give expert
evidence to the regional legislature in relation to discussion of a regional Law on
Social Partnership.
Participants in the project acted as expert advisers to US AID missions in 2000 and in
2001 and in January 2001 participants from six regions were invited to serve as expert
advisers to an EU mission reviewing trade union and labour rights in connection with
Russia’s application for admission to the General System of Preference.
Outputs
Simon Clarke and Sarah Ashwin have completed a book for Palgrave on Trade
Unions and Industrial Relations in Russia. Between them they have given lectures
and seminar presentations based on the research at LSE (twice), Warwick (twice),
Oxford (twice), Hong Kong (twice), Beijing and presented papers at the International
Conference of Europeanists (Chicago), the PSA Conference (London), International
Council for Central and East European Studies Conference (Tampere), British
International Studies Association (Edinburgh), British Association of Slavonic and
East European Studies (Cambridge) and the Liechtenstein Colloquium. We organised
a panel at a conference organised by the Otto-Brenner-Foundation in Berlin at which
three of our Russian colleagues presented papers which were selected for publication
in the conference volume. We have published one collective volume, comprising 19
articles, in Russian, Simon Clarke has published one journal article and Simon Clarke
and Sarah Ashwin each have a book chapter in press in English. Thirty-seven further
articles and book chapters and 209 conference papers have been published in Russian.
More than 60 articles in Russian and a dozen in English have been posted on the
project website. A further collective volume is in final editing for Russian publication.
The ICFTU is willing to finance the translation of a collection of the papers into
English, and Simon Clarke is seeking a publisher for such a volume.
Sarah Ashwin is currently writing two articles on conflict, on the basis of the analysis
of the case studies. Simon Clarke has started writing a book on trade unions at the
regional level, for which he will be seeking a publisher.
Impacts
As indicated above, the project has been undertaken in close collaboration with the
Russian trade unions, and research findings have regularly been fed back to the
relevant trade unions. The research has sparked off considerable debate within the
Russian trade union movement at both regional and federal levels and many of the
researchers are frequently consulted by trade union leaders (one of the St Petersburg
team was even offered the post of Deputy President of the St Petersburg and
Leningrad Trade Union Federation). We are hoping that FNPR will sponsor a
dissemination seminar to be held in Moscow in the near future in conjunction with a
meeting of FNPR’s General Council, which will be attended by all branch and
regional trade union leaders.
The project has provided regular research support for Vadim Borisov’s activity as
ICFTU representative for the CIS countries and, through his regular reports, the
research findings have been disseminated throughout the international trade union
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movement. We have undertaken specific projects within the framework of the
research that have been especially useful for the international trade union movement.
For example, case studies of trade unions in foreign-owned enterprises have been
useful for the relevant ITSs and a study of the unsuccessful attempt to establish a trade
union organisation in Coca Cola Bottlers in Ekaterinburg was conducted in close
collaboration with the IUF. Monitoring the campaign over the revision of the Labour
Code has been important for briefing international trade union and labour
organisations regarding the issues involved. The most significant impact was a special
study that we undertook of the new corporate trade unions being established by the
big Russian corporations. This enabled us to provide hard information to the ICFTU
and ICEM about the formation of a new Association of Trade Union Organisations of
Pan-National and Transnational Corporations in 2001, which sought international
recognition. On the basis of the information provided, ICEM and ICFTU were able to
write immediately to President Putin warning that the initiative would be referred to
the ILO on the grounds that its formation had been sponsored by the presidential
administration and that its council included employer representatives. This was
sufficient to stop the initiative, which had been designed to split FNPR, in its tracks.
On the basis of our work on new corporate trade unions, ISITO has just been
commissioned by the electrical industry trade union, Elektroprofsoyuz, to make
recommendations for restructuring the trade union in response to the restructuring of
the electrical generation industry.
The research has attracted considerable interest among progressive intellectuals
connected to the trade unions in China. Simon Clarke was invited to spend a week at
the China Labour College in Beijing to discuss comparisons between Russian and
Chinese trade unions at the beginning of the project and as a result Chinese colleagues
initiated a small-scale project in China using the same research design, with funding
secured by Bill Taylor of City University, Hong Kong from the Pacific Basin
Research Centre, Harvard University. Simon Clarke subsequently met with Chinese
colleagues on two visits to Hong Kong to discuss similarities and differences in the
trajectories of the unions in Russia and China, and was invited to give a keynote
address on Russian trade unions to an international conference in Beijing on Industrial
Relations and Labour Policies in a Globalising World in January 2002. He has been
invited to participate as the foreign consultant in a major ILO fact-finding mission to
China in May and June 2002. The China Labour College has invited us to hold a
dissemination seminar for the Russian project, which the ILO has expressed an
interest in funding, but, following the recent labour unrest in China it is currently
politically impossible to hold the seminar in Beijing, so we are now considering
holding it in Hong Kong.
Future Research Priorities
Ours has been the only systematic academic research conducted on Russian trade
unions in recent years. The leading Russian specialist, Leonid Gordon, has died and
most of the western specialists (Walter Connor, Paul Christensen, Linda Cook) have
left the field to concentrate their efforts elsewhere. There are important new
tendencies in the Russian trade unions that require further research: the emergence of
the new corporate trade unions, which bear comparison with Japanese trade unions;
the newly declared orientation to the organisation of young people, which can provide
a lever for institutional change; the establishment of a Women’s Committee and
programme to encourage the participation of women in the unions; the impact of the
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21
new Labour Code in the workplace and on the traditional and alternative trade unions;
and the significance of the trade unions as a potential oppositional force in a situation
in which the presidential administration has established control of the duma.
We ourselves are heavily committed to other projects at the moment, but we will
encourage our Russian collaborators to continue research in these areas and will try to
help them to secure funding to do so.
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3. Significant Achievements
1) To have achieved a comprehensive analysis of the forms and activities of
Russian trade unionism from enterprise to federal level based on rigorous and
systematic empirical research covering nine distinctive regions of Russia and
to have disseminated the research materials widely by posting them promptly
on the project website.
2) To have made a substantial input into the current debate within the Russian
trade union movement (at both federal and regional levels) about the future
role and priorities of the trade unions on the basis of a rigorous analysis of the
strengths and weaknesses of the trade unions at each level and of the
underlying sources of the tensions and conflicts within the trade union
movement.
3) To have contributed to a deeper understanding of the problems and prospects
of trade unions in Russia within the international trade union and labour
movement through close collaboration with the ICFTU and International
Trade Secretariats. The most specific achievement in this respect was to have
provided the research findings which enabled the ICFTU and ICEM to react
speedily and effectively to the request for support from all three Russian trade
union federations (FNPR, VKT and KTR) in the face of the governmentsponsored formation of a new Association of Trade Union Organisations of
Russian Pan-national and Transnational Enterprises in 2001.
4) To have provided the research base for further comparative study of trade
unions in transition countries, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe and
in China, and to allow other trade union movements to draw lessons from the
Russian experience.
5) For all the imperfections of the Russian trade unions, to have re-affirmed the
importance of the trade union movement for the development of a democratic
society and for the protection of human (social and labour) rights in a period
of rapid social change.