On May 17 approximately 300,000 workers across Russia participated in protests against the government's proposal to introduce a draconian new labour code. The new legislation removes workers' rights that have been held for decades, renders trade unions impotent and enforces, among other things, a 56-hour working week.
The actions ranged from work stoppages to demonstrations and pickets, often outside the administrative centres of towns. Areas with the largest turnouts included Kaliningrad (150,000 workers); Astrakhan, where years of work building up the local Zaschita union by Oleg Shein, one of the key coordinators of the campaign, paid off (10,000); Novosibirsk (8000); and Nizhegorod (where 8000 workers at one factory participated). Four thousand participated in Moscow.
Some 15,000 dockers participated in the ports of Vladivostok, Vostochni, Nakhodka, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Magadan, Archangelsk, Murmansk and Novorossiisk.
Although the bureaucratic leadership of the FNPR, the country's largest trade union federation, pressured by grassroots activists, had put its name to a document condemning the new labour code, it did not put any effort or resources into mobilising for the day. Most of the credit belongs to activists on the ground, especially those of the militant Zaschita and dockers' unions, coordinated by a committee set up by Shein (who has recently been elected to the Duma) with the help of veterans of workers' struggles and activists of the Movement for a Workers Party, etc.
Gennady Zyuganov's Communist Party (KPRF) was generally noted for its absence from the struggle. This is not surprising considering that, despite its rhetoric, the party leadership has willingly approved every government budget for years and has declared itself in favour of defending "honest" entrepreneurs. In fact, it was on the initiative of a KPRF member that the government's draft labour code was rushed through the State Duma.
Despite the widespread participation in the day of action, many workers who are not members of Zaschita or who have never before participated in industrial action felt that the battle against the new labour code was not relevant to them. This is because so many Russian workers have long been enduring the conditions to which the new code gives an official stamp of approval — payment in kind, arbitrary sacking at the whim of the boss, casual work with no written contracts at all, long hours without any days off. With the collapse of nearly 50% of Russian industry since privatisation was brought in, unemployment and non-payment of workers for up to 18 months or more is so common that many people are ready to tolerate any conditions and hours just for the promise of a little cash.
Nevertheless, the struggle is sharply relevant to even the millions of workers in casual or non-union (or weak union) labour. Efforts by militant activists who have experience of successful action to unionise casual workers, or to encourage those in inactive unions like the FNPR to fight for their rights can achieve much. But under the new labour code all intervention by unions will be very much harder.
With top businesspeople like the head of Alfa Bank calling on President Vladimir Putin to introduce a "Pinochet-style" regime, the increase in repression against active workers, especially those of the Zaschita union, has already begun. Russian workers, who have seen their living conditions plummet and their life expectancy drop from Western levels to just 56 years, will be battling for their lives.
The International Monetary Fund enthusiastically approved the new code, which also forces pregnant women to work night shifts and cuts maternity leave in half.
BY LISA TAYLOR