Unions plan struggle to defend wages
By Boris Kravchenko and Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Defying heavy government pressure, Russia's main union body went ahead on September 28 with a conference that had been intended to map out a campaign of militant industrial struggle.
During recent months, the 65-million-member Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR) has played an important role in developing worker resistance to the government's "shock therapy" policies. Following a one-day stoppage by more than half a million coal industry workers on September 6, labour movement leaders had anticipated further protest actions during September by defence plant employees and by farm and forestry workers. On October 5, health workers had planned to hold a national strike.
The unions' central demand has been for an end to the flagrant breach by the government of legally binding wage agreements. In conditions of near-hyperinflation, wages in Russia are often paid months late.
As planned, a wave of protest meetings rolled through the defence plants on September 17. But when President Boris Yeltsin declared parliament abolished on September 21, the political rules for labour unions changed abruptly as well.
After FNPR leaders denounced Yeltsin's action as "a coup d'etat" and called on the labour movement to use "all available means including strikes" to defend constitutional rule, telephone lines to the federation's Moscow headquarters were cut off.
Government sources then revealed the contents of two decrees which, the unions were given to understand, would be proclaimed unless the labour movement's attitude became more accommodating. One of these decrees banned financial organisations from making automatic deductions of union dues from workers' pay packets.
On September 28, Yeltsin signed a decree which robbed the unions of their traditional control over the funds from which workers receive sickness compensation, child endowments, holiday vouchers and numerous other social benefits.
The FNPR's conference on September 28 was transformed into an expanded plenum meeting of the Council of the FNPR. The agenda included discussions on the current situation and the labour movement response, and on a proposal to convoke an extraordinary congress of the FNPR.
Passions were heightened when several defenders of the besieged parliament building addressed the meeting. They presented the plenum delegates with an appeal to the trade union organisations of Russia.
The plenum finally adopted a resolution which amounted to a compromise between union militants and more cautious elements within the leadership. FNPR member unions were urged to maintain their state of pre-strike readiness. Meanwhile, the resolution appealed to the authorities to "find a reasoned compromise, and ensure a peaceful solution to the present political crisis".
The plenum approved a resolution calling for the convening of an extraordinary congress of the FNPR on October 28.