"The unions are my
International Viewpoint # 239 • November 23, 1992 able to achieve something there.
How does this leasing arrangement work?
The collective goes to the state authorities — it used to be the ministry - and asks them to lease the enterprise to the collective. But this is generally a fiction, since
IN HIS drive for power against the Communist Party-led
Soviet regime, Russian President Boris Yeltsin was obliged to offer verbal support to all the country's democratic and national sentiments. These included the belief among some workers that the removal of centralized control from the enterprises should lead to a new emphasis on self- management.
One such worker was Natalya Kuzental; David Mandel interviewed her this summer to find out how she had fared in Yeltsin's first year.
W hen we met last fall, you were working as an engineer at a scientific-production institute that belonged to the
Krasnaya Zarya electronics factory. You headed its work collective council and were active in the Leningrad Union of
Collectives. Now I find you as head of the union at the Pargolov
Factory.
[The factory makes hydraulic mechanisms for agricultural machines.] How did this come about?
Last summer, a conflict arose over wages at the Pargolov Factory. The workers in the main production shop wanted to strike but the law on the resolution of collective labour disputes required that they go through a whole series of preliminary stages. When they reached the conciliation stage, they asked the Leningrad Union of
Collectives for help, and I was delegated to represent the workers in the conciliation
It was a funny thing. The Pargolov Factory was leased from the state by the work collective two years ago. And the lawyer who chaired the conciliation commission ruled that the proposed strike was illegal, since the workers' demands were addressed wrongly to the director instead of to the council of leaseholders that makes decisions on the wages system. I refused to sign that decision and wrote a special opinion, which, of course, was ignored.
As the fall drew near and the workers prepared to strike they again called me
They did strike and they also removed the director, whom they accused of various shady dealings and theft. In a leased enterprise, it's the work collective that hires the director. This was already their second
But we have a very clever law that states that an elected person who loses his job by
16 decision of the collective is subject tobby.
tain rules governing layoffs. That means he has to be offered a series of vacant positions in the enterprise. The law also states that a general director has to be given five months compensation. He took the collective to court over this, and I acted as a witness for the collective.
Well, I ask you — what kind of job can you offer a director who has been fired for theft and financial machinations? No one would trust him with a managerial job and he's certainly not going to work as a janitor. But the court found in his favour. In the end, we persuaded him to leave of his
About that time the workers also decided to get rid of the chairman of their trade union committee. When the director went to court to have the strike declared illegal, the union chairman testified on the side of the director. So they were looking for a new chair and I was asked to put my name forward. I was elected on December 17, 1991, by the conference of the work collective from out of four candidates.
It's a relatively small plant by Soviet standards - 1,200 people. But the building is in good shape and the equipment is relatively modern. I've heard there are people interested in buying it. • Why did you decide to leave your work in the work collective councils movement, whose main goal is self-management and worker ownership, to head a
Actually, when the chairman of the council of leaseholders asked me to run, I said to him: "Why do they need a trade union in a leased enterprise?" But he and some others insisted. So I began reading the literature and saw that our Soviet literature says that trade unions are necessary under any form of ownership. I was drawn by my interest in self-management and in collective ownership. I thought I might be clever directors, through various tricks, end up paying only kopecks in rent. So it is at Pargolov. I'd say the collective was lucky to get the plant practically for free.
The fixed assets still belong formally to the state, but the profits, the materials and all the product belong to the workers.
• I see that the status of "state"
property is unclear.
You've caught on! But the government now says it wants to restore order. They are forcing us all to open joint-stock companies. I read the new decree last night in the newspaper and I felt sick. On all counts, it is the opposite of everything we were fighting for. I won't bore you with the details, but all state plants by the start of 1993 must become open joint-stock companies. In the model company charter, the general director becomes head of the board of directors. That means the power of the administration is strengthened ten-
The work collective has only one right: to choose one of three ways to privatize their plant. One method gives the collective a certain percentage of the stocks, but these stocks give the workers no voting rights. Under another, they can buy a majority of stocks, but there is little chance of them being able to do that, especially in view of the total lawlessness governing the evaluation process. Under the third method, the administration runs the plant for a year, and, if it is successful, gets 20% of the stocks.
But to this day, the resolutions of the Supreme Soviet on privatization and changes to the law on privatization, as well as the programme on privatization itself, have nowhere been published. • Why do you think that the movement of work collective councils failed in its basic aim of winning for the workers the right to run their factories collectively and to decide the question of ownership?
I left the Leningrad Union of Collectives because I felt that Sergei Andreev, its leader, was saying one thing, while the Union was busy doing something quite different: it was making propaganda for the creation of joint stock companies. My idea was different: leased and collective enterprises. We are Soviet people after all, our mentality is such that we prefer social, people's property. Of course, we were never really
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RUSSIA last hope"
November 23, 1992 owners, but now they want to fix that in the constitution. It used to proclaim that the property was "state" and in brackets "the whole people's". Now the phrase "the whole people's" has disappeared and no one knows where it went. They now tell us we can buy this property from the state.
You were at the Congress of Work Collectives when we decided that, before any privatization occurs, the enterprise should be transferred to the full economic management of the collective. But you know how completely illiterate we were. We are only now beginning to understand what ownership and "full economic management" mean and what the different between them is. And those who have the power are easily able to get round us on
Anyway, here I am agitating for leasing and the Union of Work Collectives is supporting the formation of joint-stock companies. I would tell them: "What are you telling people? Don't you know that stocks are capital? Capital always ends up in the hands of the same people. We need to look to other models, like the workers' cooperatives in Mondragon in Spain where the workers themselves run things in their own interests. Didn't the movement here begin with the idea of self-management? How is it possible if the enterprise is divided into shares that can be bought and sold on the
Intellectuals who used to be for leasing now point to Yugoslavia to show that the initial ideas of the movement can't work. But Yugoslavia never had real people's enterprises — there was no self-management, no democracy, nothing. On television we are constantly told that open stock companies are best because they attract investment. But we need to go our own way. I've read all that I could find about collective enterprises around the world, and I think that they are much closer to us than any open stock companies.
I saw that no one in the Leningrad Union of Collectives was interested in leasing or collective enterprises and so I left in protest. Besides that I found that Andreev's aides were organizing some sort of "busi-
• To train businessmen?
No, to conduct various commercial operations. And the people in the Union's leadership were going to the enterprises to get money for the business centre. Not a kopeck went to the Union itself. When the
Union elected a new council, Andreev attacked me viciously and asked the members not to include me, so there would be no opposition.
So i left. I can't work in an organization that won't tolerate any opposition and that refuses to do real work with the enterprises and give concrete help.
1990
Andreev has, in practice, formed a party. In the Union's new constitution there is a clause on individual membership. They are getting ready for new elections. Together with entrepreneurs they have created a school to train future party representatives: the entrepreneurs give the money and Andreev selects and trains suitable candidates. Need I say more?
Andreev was a nobody who wanted to make himself a public career; so he latched onto the work collective movement. He became chairman of the Council of Collectives of Leningrad although he himself represented no collective. He was director of some private institute in Leningrad and he even had the nerve to make his post as chairman of the Union a paid one. Anyway, he has launched his career and nothing is left of the movement. • Does that mean there is no organization in Leningrad fighting for management and collective ownership?
Was there ever really one? In my enterprise, where I was chair of the work collective council, we had in our charter the phrase: "The right of full economic management is transferred to the collective" But what good is that if the collective doesn't know what "full economic management"! means and if the work collective council is in the hands of the administration? Even at Pargolov, a leased enterprise, management has succeeded in subordinating the council of leaseholders and unilaterally assigns wage coefficients and
• Did you quit your job at
Krasnaya Zarya to work in the union at Pargolov?
I took a six month leave without pay.
And its a good thing I didn't quit, since with this new decree, they are going to try to quickly push through the formation of a joint stock company. I'm still a member of
RUSSIA
1992 the work collective council at my old factory, though it has fallen apart long ago and the management does what it likes. But I keep up my contacts because there are supposed to be new elections to the council as well as to the post of plant director. • Is this the work collective council of your institute or of the entire Krasnaya Zarya enterprise?
Krasnaya Zarya fell apart in the same stupid way as the Soviet Union: in a foul way with everyone in opposition to everyone else. This allowed the administration to grab everything it needed. To this day, its property hasn't been legally divided up and yet the enterprises exist independently. You can grab a room, property, do anything you want, except make the enterprise work. There are no orders. Some of the biggest layoffs in the city are occurring
But the chairman of the trade union committee of my institute is a very good woman. And it was probably her example that helped to decide me to take my present job. Previously, I had scarcely taken any notice of the unions. They could never really function in this country. We had the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the Council of Ministers and the All-Union Council of Trade Unions jointly signing resolutions. So what was there left for the unions to do? They paid sick leave. They administered social security.
I came to trade union work with a significant knowledge of the law about work collectives and the like, things that traditional union activists never had to know.
Since I began this job, I've carefully gone over all the union documents and the labour code, and I've been able to organize the union work in a totally new way.
I began working in December. Sometime
1. rephrase in a sont of leasing arrangement with 1 7 1. The phrase signifies that the work collective runs the state.
International Viewpoint # 239 • November 23, 1992
RUSSIA in January, they elected the new director. Now, the comrades at the factory say that the third revolution is in progress, because this is the third time they've replaced the director and a certain part of the collective feels that the new director doesn't suit the job either. • How did they find him in the
Actually, he had already been director there and was kicked out with the help of the party. Maybe that made him attractive to the workers. He became some sort of private entrepreneur in the area of culture. He is a tough, cruel person. The workers tried to find some organization that had a data bank on potential directors and other specialists. But at the time there was none, though there is now.
He was hired by the council of leaseholders, which is elected by the work collective. But we still can't find out what his programme is, or on what basis the council decided to hire him. Well, its true that the workshops he'd been managing made a good profit. He showed how he had been given a million roubles and turned them into ten million and so forth.
But he immediately started to issue orders, for example, that the plant had to work on Saturdays. According to the law this requires the union's agreement. So I went to him and asked: "Is the plant working this Saturday?" He said it wasn't. when I came to work on Monday, I learnt that the main shop had worked. Not only had he not obtained the agreement of the union committee, but he lied to me.
I wrote to the council of leaseholders that management was violating the labour code. The director accused me of merely wanting to assert my power. But this was no formality. It was a question of pay for overtime. After all, this extra money came out of the pockets of workers who didn't work the overtime.
That's when the director said: "Why do I need your agreement? I'll get the agreement of the trade union "Independence". So I thought I'd better look into this new trade union. It had no committee, no presence at the factory. After the strike in the fall, some workers here formed a branch of this Independence. • How did the Pargolov workers get on to Independence?
They had heard of it and needed help with their strike. It's good at leading strikes. In fact, it does little else. Anyone who participates in these strikes is considered a member of the union.
The former director sued Independence's organizer over the strike. After they got rid of the director that person became assistant 18 , director for production.
At any rate when I began to prepare a draft collective agreement, I included two members of Independence in the committee. These two come and tell me "We've decided we don't need a collective agreement. We need a system of individual
I understood I would have a hard time with them. It isn't a trade union. It doesn't take up grievances, look into issues of wages, layoffs or dismissals. But when the director needs a union signature on one of his orders, he'll go to Independence whose very membership is undefined. Trade unions are springing up like mushrooms. Ten people get together and form a new
I've understood now that we need trade unions like oxygen itself. Unity makes unions strong. Of course, there can be different unions, but they should put forward similar, concrete demands: against unemployment, for higher wages and so on. But individual enterprises or groups of workers can't act on their own. Even if they win a wage rise, what about the others? But that's what happening - public transport workers, miners, teachers, medical workers, one after the other and all separately.
And of late, articles start appearing in the press that trade unions are nonsense, we don't need them, that we're not doing what trade unions are supposed to do. In the past they were forced to distribute scarce consumer goods among their members. They got three cars for a thousand workers. But I firmly declared at the factory that we would distribute nothing. Our union concerns are wages, employment, collective agreement, layoffs. We won't distribute anything because it is always a source of conflict and division among the workers. Besides, there is nothing to distribute now. And in the future, everything will be on open sale.
Maybe it's easier for me since I have no past in the trade unions. I don't know how it is for the old-time union leaders, but I want to speak on the radio - I have
PRIVATIZATION HAS BEGUN!
connections with one of the smaller stations — and say that union members should not leave their union. They should hold new elections to their union committees, because everything depends on what kind of people are in it. The laws exist, a federation of trade unions exists that has good economists and lawyers - everything exists that makes it possible for unions to work. But the basic work is in the factories.
• What union federation are you referring to?
The Leningrad regional federation. I have no use for my branch union. But I do need the Leningrad federation. It has certain structures that one can't find anywhere else; it gives help to union workers. I've been a member of the Perestroika Club, the Popular Front, Democratic Russia2 — no one, at least in Leningrad, defends workers' interests. The unions are my last hope. • How about your branch committee?
I've had only two visits from the central committee of the branch union in Moscow. They know less than I do. They are not necessarily old people, but their thinking and behaviour is old-style. My main concern has always been the question of ownership, but they don't even know how to think about the issue. When I told the branch union that my director violated article 85 of the labour code by making the plant work on Saturday without the union's agreement, they said: "Vladimirovna, you can't do anything. The law only provides for a ten rouble fine". This they tell me after prices had been freed and wages raised ten-fold! Ten roubles had become worth next to nothing, but they haven't gotten around to changing the 2. These are organizations with democratic programmes that arose at different stages of perestroika.
November 23, 1992 labour code. Incidentally, the Law on Collective Agreements was adopted on March 12 but it was published only in May. That's how it is with all the basic legislation. • What were they waiting for?
Ask the government. In all likelihood, they didn't want the law. You remember when the law on trade unions was adopted in the old USSR Supreme Soviet. There was a terrible battle there, and only Gorbachev's intervention got it passed. This allowed the unions to continue to exist. And now, as I was saying, articles are appearing on the harmfulness of the unions. Back in May, Democratic Russia organized a sort of civic forum. Yeltsin was there. Someone got up and said: "Boris Nikolaevich; you dispersed the party. Now, it's time to disperse the unions. You should issue a decree forcing the unions to prove the reality of their membership • There's something I haven't quite understood. The council of leaseholders appoints and fires the director. This same council is elected by the work collective as is your own union committee. How is it then that the director, who is the employee of the work collective, is able to push you
When I began to work in the union at the start of the year, the council of leaseholders was putting together a new wage system. They decided not only to raise wages, since prices had been freed, but they introduced a new system of coefficients. All the workers are divided into skill categories and each category is assigned a coefficient, from the cleaning woman at the bottom to the director at the top. A difference of about one to four and
Well, this new system became the basis of total lawlessness on the part of the new director, who decides everything along with his department heads and lets the collective discuss nothing. He decides the indices and when to raise the coefficient of
The union committee came out against this system from the start. But we had no choice but to give our approval to it for three months because of a legal technicality — otherwise the workers wouldn't have been paid in January. But as the weeks went by, we saw the total arbitrariness of management and sounded the alarm. We wanted clear criteria for raising and lowering the classification of workers, we wanted the initial coefficients to be established by a commission that would include the union and council of leaseholders.
• I don't understand why the workers don't recall their representatives to the council of leaseholders if they are sO subservient to the administration.
Elections take place by sectors of 60 to 70 workers and only the sector can recall its representative. The general conference decides only the total number of representatives and chooses the chairman.
The director is trying to lay off workers, but the chairman of the council of leaseholders and myself told him we won't allow it. The council of leaseholders is itself demanding these layoffs, saying that this will allow it to raise the wages of the remaining workers. • I can't see how the workers can be laid off if they are leaseholders, that is, the bosses of the
That's what I say. "You can only fire a leaseholder for violation of the labour code". But our laws contradict one another. How can a government issue a decree on bankruptcy that provides for layoffs of up to 30% where the form of ownership changes, when there isn't even an unemployment insurance fund or a job creation
But even our imperfect laws are being violated left and right by the director. He hasn't even read the collective agreement, which he constantly violates.
Before perestroika, if I had a problem with the administration, I could go to the party committee, and if it didn't bother the district party committee, I could get help. If my activity bothered them, I could get sent to a mental hospital. In any case, the administration was constrained within a framework. Now there is total lawlessness.
I have a model set of rules worked out by the chairman of our union in Krasnaya
Zarya. They've been trying to lay workers off for months, but haven't succeeded
The issue of layoffs is a tough one for the union committees. In many places the plant really has no orders or money to pay wages and the people who aren't being laid off ask the union to sign the order.
You tell them that these people won't be able to feed their families that they aren't to blame for the director's failure to get new orders. It's especially important to defend people who have opened their mouths against the management.
People from other factories who have been laid off call me, and I ask "What about your union?" But they say the union okayed the layoff, so I tell them to go to court. This is a country of extremes - the courts restore practically everyone to their
RUSSIA • Some people say that it is impossible to reform the old unions, even if there are new elections. I know, but I think it depends on us. I'm able to do everything the new trade unions say they are trying to do, but within the framework of the former state union.
People say: "Oh, we don't believe in anything. We're tired". And I say to them: "What are you tired from? What have you done? All your lives you spent looking into the bosses' mouths". The best we did was curse Brezhnev at home in front of our TV sets. And we marched in neat columns to the elections and voted without even knowing what the candidates stood for. • What other conflicts have you had with the director?
Over privatization. There are special legal rights for leased enterprises. If the collective decides to buy the plant then no other buyers are considered. The workers supported such a move and the director raised a fuss. The issue remains undecided. • Do the workers support the idea of collective ownership?
They do, although they often don't realize it or fully understand its meaning. After all, we've lived with the idea for 70 years and before that there was Russian peasant collectivism. They know for sure they don't want to be hired labour. They are only now realizing they were hired labour
But the government has other ideas. There was a huge article in Rossiiskaya Gazeta on how well off we would all be if all the enterprises became joint stock companies. What happens next is clear - any plant that is worth anything will be bought up by those with money and connections.
Take my factory, Krasnaya Zarya. I suspect it was sold long ago to Italians. There is really no work collective council there and people are totally in the dark. Krasnaya Zarya became a member of the concern, which included over
150 enterprises of Union significance.4 In fact "Telekom" was the Ministry of the
Communications Industry that changed its name and became independent of the state.
All the ministry officials crawled over into the concern. Then the concern became a non-state joint stock company, even though the state had invested millions in foreign currency in it.
So I ask the director of Krasnaya Zarya:
"We are members of that joint stock company. Where are our stocks now that it has been split up? The concern is no longer a state company. Who is the owner?" He
3. Semi-official Russian government paper.
4. Under the command economy, enterprises of 1, ovide the corniance or subordinated to the 1 9 central government in Moscow.
Controlled transition on the ropes
International Viewpoint # 239 • November 23, 1992
RUSSIA/NIGERIA only mumbled something. Of course, all the enterprise managers are on the board of directors — in practice it became theirs. • I read an article in a Leningrad paper yesterday which accused the unions of preparing to overthrow the government.
DOUBTS have recently been raised as to whether the
You see, the unions are starting to funchandover by Nigeria's military to civilian rule planned for tion as real unions and the press is turning the end of this year will in fact take place. The Financial against them. But in fact they are not in implacable opposition to the government.
Times (October 16, 1992) reports the view of a top Nigerian
You can't come out directly against the official that: "There is a climate building up [for current government now; you can only demand it military dictator General Babangida] to extend".
change its course.
In Kenya, where a similar move away from one party rule
• Why can't you come out against is supposed to be taking place, the opposition parties are the government itself?
reported to be considering a boycott, accusing the
Well, it isn't at all clear who would government of preparing to rig elections. With the renewed replace it. Didn't we elect Yeltsin? I agitafighting in Angola after elections there, a crisis of Africa's ted in favour of Yeltsin. Are we to have presidential elections each year? No one democratic transition seems underway.
will go to vote or they will vote for some
International Viewpoint has received the following article nationalist demagogue such as Zhirinovson the reality behind the controlled transition in Nigeria.
ky. People loved Nevzorov. They went on hunger strike to get him registered as a candidate for the elections.
EDWIN MADUNAGU - September 1992*
I don't see anyone better than Yeltsin.
You don't understand how he works on people. I saw him at the Kirov factory. The audience was pure working class. He cracked jokes. It was a miracle to see how he
• What about the leadership of the Leningrad Federation of Trade
Unions? I heard they may be prepared to support the creation of a Party of Labour.
I know the vice president Lisyuk pretty well, since it was he who created a commission on privatization that has come out for collective property. He has a past, but people can change their colours and I can work with him now. The Federation's pre-
I VERY regime in Nigeria since independence its search for legitimacy to admit the fact of the enduring misery of the country's people. This admission, however, is made but once, at the regime's inauguration. Thereafter, compelled by the logic of capitalist development, it gets down to the task of adding further burdens on the weary shoulders of "fellow Nigerians", as the people are endearingly called at each inauguration. 1 Hausa-Fulani
The same was true of the coup in Nigeria led by Generals Buhari,
• SOKOTO
SOKOTO STATE
SORNO STATE
ONGOLA STATE
6 Itsekiri
Igala
Idoma
21 Mixed
22 Jakun
13 Nupe
PU• DIbio
Sura
Jabs
Chamba
3 Urhobo-Isoko sident Makarov doesn't support collective property. He says he was in the US where he learnt that it's not efficient.
But I've cast in my lot with the trade unions. This is concrete work in a concrete enterprise. And it's better work than the work collective councils are doing. In general, although I was active in those councils from their inception, I now have a great mistrust of them. Management is able to lure these people over to their side. And so I tell people: "You have a bad union? Hold new elections. Because if you destroy these unions, you'll be left with nothing. It takes a long time to build a new structure". * 5. Vladimir Zhirinovsky — leader of the radical Russian nationalist Liberal Democratic Party. The party emblem is a falcon surrounded by a picture of the "old" Russian territories, including Finland, Poland and Alaska. Aleksandr Nevzorov was a popular, muckraking Leningrad television journalist in the perestroika 20 year who han since sportion preference for the
Idiagbon and Babangida in 1983. Its stated aims were as ever different from its real intentions. What these latter were can be divined from the controversies preceding the coup and the immediate actions and policies of its leaders.
### Young military officers