Proletariat 2.0

The government turns on the tax press again

Trade unions loyal to the authorities paint banners and inflate balloons ahead of the May Day demonstrations. There is no time for routine like protecting the rights of workers. Rights issues are more preoccupied by small independent trade unions. What did they succeed and what awaits them further - studied The New Times on the eve of May 1
Andrei is a little less than thirty, he took up trade union activities four years ago: “Sooner or later, people will realize that a trade union is a normal, civilized way to declare their rights,” he is sure. The fact that it began to “reach” became clear in the fall of 2005. Then, at the Vsevolozhsk automobile plant "Ford" in St. Petersburg, a strike of a newly organized trade union took place. As a result, the company's management made concessions and increased the wages of workers by more than 14%. Dashing trouble is the beginning: in March 2010, after the assembly line was stopped, the management once again agreed to an increase in salaries: 11.8% - a fantastic result by today's standards. Ford salaries are among the highest in the industry.

From welder to politician
Alexey Etmanov, the leader of the Vsevolozhsk trade union, welder of the body shop, today is perhaps the main star of the renewed trade union movement. Striped "training shoes", sharp jokes and a traumatic pistol in your pocket in order to shoot back from class enemies - it is Etmanov's personal charisma, who managed to unite most of the 2,000-strong workforce, that many explain the success of the Ford trade union, which no one in Russia has yet been able to repeat. Now the welder Etmanov is predicted with might and main a great political future.

The example of Etmanov and the company turned out to be contagious, and the Vsevolozhsk no pasaran was heard far beyond the St. Petersburg region and the automotive industry. In 2006-2008, a whole wave of trade unions swept through the enterprises, and the term “new trade union” came into use. Literally everyone hastened to unite: from teachers to dock workers, from builders to policemen. The process was especially active at new enterprises - where young labor collectives were selected from people with a fairly high level of education.

„

Nearly $7 billion real estate

small

a bunch of trade unionists

”

However, not everywhere. An example opposite to Ford is the giant AvtoVAZ. The independent trade union "Unity" has existed here since the 90s and was once a really serious force. The former head of Unity, Anatoly Ivanov, as befits a trade union leader, survived a couple of assassination attempts, after which, on a wave of popularity, he was elected to the State Duma and joined United Russia. The current leader, Pyotr Zolotarev, cannot consolidate the masses of workers, although, it would seem, God himself ordered: a drop in wages, the threat of mass layoffs and the dubious future of the enterprise itself ... But the number of the trade union has been hovering around a mark of just over 1000 people for many years, then how about 100 thousand people worked at AvtoVAZ until recently. When tensions at the enterprise peaked last summer, Unity decided to hold a couple of rallies. The actions were attended by 1.5-2 thousand people (in Tolyatti, 700 thousand) and were held under slogans like a call to "remember the rebellious sailors" and to nationalize the car factory, already controlled by the state corporation. The example of AvtoVAZ is quite typical. Most large enterprises have two trade unions. The first is official, something like a shop, where New Year's gifts are given out in exchange for loyalty. The second is reminiscent of a tiny Marxist circle, small and marginal.

CJSC "FNPR"

The FNPR (Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia, headed by the irremovable Mikhail Shmakov) is the legal successor of the property of the Soviet trade unions and to this day is the largest trade union association in the country. True, the official trade unions patronized by it, with rare exceptions, inspire little confidence among the workers. Consist in them, as a rule, by inertia, since Soviet times. Yuri Milovidov, director of the Center for Support of Trade Unions and Civic Initiatives and a longtime critic of the FNPR, defines the organizational form of the country's main trade union as a "closed joint-stock company." “Property that was created with trade union dues, social insurance funds, direct state subsidies - union hotels, sanatoriums, rest houses, former palaces of culture - almost $ 7 billion worth of real estate was privatized by a small handful of trade union functionaries,” Milovidov calculated. “Now they live off the income from this property, and they don’t need a measly contribution, they need a sign that gives them the legal right to dispose of the property. The 30 million members of the FNPR have nothing to do with this enormous wealth.”

You are going the wrong way

“At the top, they understand very well that really working trade unions are fleeing from the FNPR. This is a mummy,” says the leader of one of the trade unions. “Therefore, the government is looking for a new organization that can be relied upon to control the growing labor movement.” In the trade union environment, they say that back in 2008, the same "Ford" Alexei Etmanov was allegedly invited to high offices and offered to head the organization that would oversee the emerging new trade union movement, but Etmanov refused. This was a couple of months before the failed assassination attempts on the leader of the Ford trade union: in November 2008, he was attacked twice in his own entrance.
With the onset of the crisis, when the danger of consolidated actions of the workers arose, the need to put independent trade unions under control was discussed again. As a result, the Kremlin apparently decided to unite the “new” trade unions around the Sotsprof organization, which has about 1.5 million members.
In the "new" trade unions, this project is skeptical. But recently an organization was created under the sonorous name "Rot-Front", which is already trying to bring independent trade unions to the political clearing. Etmanov became one of its leaders.

New generation

“The crisis hardly stimulated the development of independent trade unions,” Oleg Shein, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Labor and Social Policy, told The New Times. “It exacerbated social conflicts, but the ‘new’ trade unions are still facing strong resistance from both the owners and the authorities.” “In the absence of super profits, the owners of enterprises are even less willing to make concessions,” complains Andrey, an MPRA (Interregional Trade Union of Automotive Workers. —The New Times) activist. Of the 3,000 people who participated in a recent HeadHunter study, when asked if they had a union at work, 71% answered no, and of the 24% who answered yes, only 12% were in a union. “But the trade union movement will develop,” Shein is sure. - Of course, the development will be more active in those industries and enterprises where either there is foreign capital, or the staff is integrated into global networks and can compare their position with the position of colleagues in developed countries. But already now we can talk about the emergence of a new generation of employees who will not tolerate and remain silent - they will defend their rights.”