The Economist (UK) December 9-15, 2000 And what about the workers? KEMEROVO Russia's feeble trade unions are still too strong for the government's taste COMMUNISM failed to deliver a workers' paradise. But much of post-Communist Russia looks like a workers' nightmare. In the mines of the Kuzbas, a coal-rich region of southern Siberia, 179 miners have died this year, nearly two for every million tonnes of coal mined, one of the highest death-rates in the world. The mines ought to be profitable, and to pay their workers well. Yet wages are only around $100 a month; shadowy intermediaries swipe most of the money. On paper, there is plenty of protection, for working conditions and trade-union rights in general. In reality, the unions' leaders are tame; the media give little coverage to labour issues; employers can do pretty much what they want; and anyone who steps out of line risks the sack, or worse. Worker militancy is spasmodic. The last big protests were in 1998, when miners, fed up with being unpaid for months, blocked the trans-Siberian railway and picketed the Russian government's headquarters. Now unrest is flickering anew. Workers whose salaries are still paid late, such as teachers, have been striking recently in Siberia and other parts of Russia. But more serious, from the government's point of view, are protests by the official trade unions against the proposed new labour code, on which parliament will vote this month. The version favoured by the government makes it harder to organise independent trade unions. Under it, unions will have to give managers information about their membership. Mandatory union involvement in health and safety is replaced by loosely defined consultation. Employers can pay wages in kind rather than in cash. And this version weakens the unions' strongest existing weapon-the right to sue employers in the courts on issues like unpaid wages. (There are thousands of such cases every year; sometimes the unions even win.) Irene Stevenson, who leads an American-sponsored centre in Moscow that gives training and legal advice to Russian unions, says the new code amounts to "castration". The unions are planning protests over the next two weeks. "We are just asking politely," says Vladimir Skotnikov, head of the official trade unions in the Kuzbas capital, Kemerovo, which held a large demonstration last month. "We are turning to the president, asking him to defend the economic and social rights of the citizen as guaranteed by the constitution." The authorities seem nervous. Prominent politicians normally loyal to the government, such as Aman Tuleyev, the governor of Kemerovo, have joined in the criticism. There is even talk of another wave of nationwide unrest, set off both by the new law and by resentment over living standards, which remain miserably low even when Russia is awash with oil money. Managers are twitchy. The director of one coal-processing plant paid seven hunger strikers 2,000 roubles ($72) apiece, from his own pocket, to persuade them to end their protest. "Managers believe that even the most militant official trade union is better than even a moderate strike committee," says Piotr Bizyukov, who runs a trade-union research centre at Kemerovo's university. One potential hotspot is the town of Anzhero-Sudzhensk, 100km (60 miles) from Kemerovo. It is poor: until recently the workers at its glass factory were paid in loaves. In two recent protests they have blocked the nearby trans-Siberian railway. The co-ordinator of those protests was Vladimir Vorobiev, an eloquent agitator who runs a small independent trade union. The authorities seem unsure how best to blacken his name. The governor's office whips out a police dossier, apparently showing some brushes with the law 30 years ago. "He's just a common criminal," explains a spokesman. Other official and semi-official figures allege, contradictorily, that Mr Vorobiev is utterly marginal; that he is extremely dangerous; that he is mentally unbalanced; that he is an anti-Semite; and that he is a provocateur sponsored by outsiders. Mr Tuleyev says he will "simply not allow" any further protests to block the railway. In fact, Mr Vorobiev makes a rather sober impression. Striding up and down the living room of a borrowed flat, in front of a row of mute but appreciative female supporters, he asks, reasonably enough, where the hundreds of millions of dollars provided by the World Bank and other international lenders to revamp the coal industry have actually gone. Corrupt managers, bureaucrats and the official trade unions, he says, combine to keep workers in poverty. The authorities argue that elaborate labour legislation, like environmental protection, is a brake on economic growth that Russia cannot afford. It may be that fairly regular wages, modest economic growth and a lot of intimidation are enough to keep unions from organising any effective protests. But of all the possible kinds of opposition to President Vladimir Putin's government, disgruntled workers would be one of the trickiest. ******
