The seaport of St. Petersburg did not see an increase in loadings

The conflict in the Seaport of St. Petersburg is drawing more and more actors into its orbit. Last week, Vice-Governor Igor Albin held a meeting with the trade union activists and management of the stevedore, and today State Duma deputy Sergei Vostretsov will fly in to talk with the loaders. Having received a promise from the city authorities to assist in resolving the conflict, the dockers resumed their usual work schedule, but are ready to finally lay down their arms only when they see a signature on a version of the collective agreement that suits them. The port is in no hurry to disclose the results of the first day after the strike, not seeing any improvements as of Friday morning.

Dockers of the Sea Port of St. Petersburg suspended the Italian strike after a tripartite meeting of the activists of the primary trade union organization, the port management and representatives of the city government, said Anzor Lomtadze, chairman of the primary organization of the Russian Dockers' Union (RPD), at the end of last week.

The Italian dockers' strike at the cargo port began on October 30. Longshoremen were not satisfied with the terms of the new collective labor agreement with the enterprise. The management of the port, part of the transport and logistics holding UCL of Vladimir Lisin, did not include in its conditions indexation to the inflation rate of the tariff rate, on the basis of which all payments to loaders are calculated. According to Mr. Lomtadze, the last indexation took place in 2011.

An Italian strike is a working regime when port employees do not go beyond their job descriptions, which leads to a significant drop in labor productivity.

Despite the protest, the collective agreement was concluded on November 20. There are two more trade unions at the enterprise, one of which, “Portovik”, unites more than 60% of the enterprise’s employees. And thanks to Portovik, a numerical superiority was achieved when signing the document with the EPOR (Unified Representative Body of Workers), which included representatives of all trade unions in proportion to the number. It is worth noting that the most representative trade union of the enterprise was registered last summer. Anzor Lomtadze believes that Portovik was created at the instigation of the port management so that the enterprise would have the opportunity to ignore the interests of dockers.

After this, the RPD activists held three pickets. One took place in St. Petersburg, on Lenin Square, the other two in Moscow: at the head office of the UCL holding and at the capital representative office of the government of St. Petersburg. The head of the primary organization promised to continue the strike until the workers' demands are heard, and the dockers, unlike the rest of the staff, are able to reduce the real productivity of the stevedoring company.

The conflict was noticed in Smolny, and on Thursday, November 26, a meeting was held with Vice-Governor Igor Albin. A representative of the executive branch expressed the opinion that the port should take into account the demands of dockers in the collective agreement. He promised the loaders to conduct an analysis of the level of wages and social benefits lost as a result of the signing of a new collective agreement. The analytical work will be carried out by the committees on labor, social policy and transport. The entire complex of activities will take three months and should be completed in February 2016. In addition, Mr. Albin recommended that the dockers return to their previous work schedule.

It is not easy to determine exactly when the protest actions by the forklifts ended. Anzor Lomtadze said that following the meeting, a meeting of the labor collective was held, at which it was decided to stop protest actions on November 26 at 20:00. The strike will resume if the dockers' demands are ignored again.

However, the next day, the press service of the Seaport of St. Petersburg sent out a press release stating that the RPD management was ignoring the proposal of the vice-governor, and the Italian strike continued.

“As of 10:00 on November 27, 2015, the Italian strike continues. This fact may indicate the complete inability of RPD leader Anzor Lomtadze to negotiate and that he has ambitions that are far from the vital interests of the dockers,” the port’s news release says.

Let us remind you that earlier the UCL press service reported that the statements of the trade union RPD are speculation, and the workers themselves do not show dissatisfaction. Mr. Lomtadze himself claims that the protests have stopped and expresses the opinion that they are trying to put pressure on the workers in the information field.

The UCL press service told Kommersant that at the end of the working day on Friday they were summing up the shift output and could not accurately determine whether output had returned to its previous level or remained low. “We hope that the dockers will reduce the pressure and return to their usual productivity,” the company added. Earlier, UCL stated that “there are no difficulties in the transshipment process,” since we are talking about “a slight decrease in output for certain types of cargo in individual teams.”

It is worth adding that the labor conflict managed to attract the attention of federal politicians. Today in St. Petersburg there will be a meeting of trade union activists with State Duma deputy Sergei Vostretsov, who heads the Sotsprof trade union association, deputy of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg Evgeny Marchenko and chairman of the Russian Dockers Trade Union Vasily Kozarenko. The Sotsprof report cites Mr. Vostretsov’s opinion on the need to prevent “political speculation” around the economic problem.

Sotsprof is aware of the results of the meeting with the vice-governor of St. Petersburg, but wants to understand what conditions are required to end the labor dispute. “The suspension of the dispute does not yet end the strike,” the deputy’s press service noted.

German Kostrinsky

The suspension of the dockers' strike went unnoticed