International Centre for Trade Union Rights

Living with the marketAuthor(s): STIRLING SMITHSource: International Union Rights, Vol. 8, No. 2, Focus on the Americas (2001), p. 24Published by: International Centre for Trade Union RightsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41937177 .

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REPORT □ 'TRANSITION' COUNTRIES

Living with the market

Trade unions in the former Soviet Union have had to

adjust to a very different role in

the post Communist era

STIRLING SMITH is director of Labour and Society

International

email: info@lsi.org.uk

The descent into poverty The term "transition countries" is used by the World Bank and other agencies to describe the countries of Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. When the Cold War ended, it was assumed that these were advanced, industrialised economies and a dose of the free market - "shock therapy" as it was called - would soon put everything to rights.

It is now clear that the 1990s has seen one of the biggest disasters in history, a transition to mass poverty. This is what the World Bank says:

"If current growth trends and policies persist, it turns out that the world has a pretty good chance of meeting the international develop- ment targets even if we do nothing. However, a disproportionate share of the poverty reduc- tion takes place in East and South Asia. ...there is little poverty reduction in Africa, while poverty in the transition countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia actually gets worse. By 2015, the latter economies would be poorer than South Asia."

This is not some accident. There has been a huge hijacking of assets, often spirited out of the coun- try into offshore bank accounts. The UK ambas- sador in Azerbaijan said:

"We accept as inevitable that there will be some increase in inequality compared with Soviet days. What is hard to accept is the hijacking of assets and wealth by a few people while a large part of the country goes empty handed."

Attacks on rights The old Soviet Labour Code gave unions a big say in the workplace. The successor republics have almost all made amendments to it. A struggle is being fought now in the Russian Duma where a new draft code is being debated. Unions have objected to the government's draft. But even now, the courts and administrative authorities place frequent obstacles in the path of trade unions, and especially grass roots activists. In Azerbaijan, the oil companies (with backing from the government) have refused to recognise the trade unions.

Trades union occupied a special role in Soviet society, and all workers were obliged to join them. Some people thought they could not adapt, that they would be irrelevant. The experi- ence of Labour and Society International (LSI), a small organisation set up by the trade union movement to provide education, is that unions have changed, and are going to change more - workers need them and want them.

Unions in the region do not have much money - many members are paid only every few months. The old education system could not be maintained. So LSI has concentrated on training the trainers - equipping activists with the skills to carry out courses at plant, city or oblast

(regional) level. Under the old system, most col- lective bargaining was done at industry level; With plant level bargaining, unions needed new skills. The trade unionists who come show enor- mous enthusiasm and energy. In some cases, the trainees have gone on to change their unions to make them more responsive to the new situation. One new tutor reported:

"After the course The ABC of Collective Agree- ment, workplace unions of four enterprises man- aged to sign socially oriented collective agree- ments containing a number of benefits for the plants' workforce."

Unions fight back Trade unions are the only mass institutions of the Soviet period to have survived. In some instances they are unreformed but in others they have a widely accepted legitimacy. They are the organ- ised voice of working people and the main lobby for veterans, pensioners, the disabled and the unemployed. They are the lobby for the poor. They have tried to protect the old 'social sphere' as a minimum floor of provision as international accountancy firms, working as consultants for the World Bank and other 'aid' agencies have hacked away at creches, medical facilities and schools to leave behind the 'core business'.

LSI has worked with affiliates of the interna- tional trade secretariats - in particular the Inter- national Federation of Chemical Energy Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM) and the Int- ernational Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF). The energy multina- tionals were amongst the first to move into Russia and oil rich central Asia and the Caucasus. Tobacco and brewing companies and 'food' giants such as McDonalds followed.

The multinationals can be resisted. In Almaty, when the Phillip Morris tobacco company sought to bypass the union, the chairperson of the union committee organised the membership and even- tually made management sign a collective agree- ment. The workers in the factory making raw materials for McDonalds outside Moscow have formed a union which has survived despite the company's best efforts.

Trade unions will lose many of their members over the next few years as more enterprises are privatised and people move to work in small pri- vate firms, the service sector or household farms. Given this, unions are also focussing on advocacy for all working people, not just those in work. There is plenty of evidence that they can do this, if given the right kind of support.

References Paul Collier and David Dollar, Can the World Cut Poverty in Half?, World Bank, July 2000 Address by HE Mr Roger Thomas at the Caspian Infrastructure Exhibition and Conference, Baku 21 -24th October 1997

INTERNATIONAL union rights Page 24 Volume 8 Issue 2 2001

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