By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — A new surge of labour protests swept across Russia during the first half of February, as wage payments to millions of workers remained months in arrears. The most militant struggles were by workers in the coal industry.
In the case of the miners and technicians, the government quickly made concessions, ordering funds to be made available to cover large parts of the wage arrears. These steps confirm earlier indications that, since monetarist economic ministers Yegor Gaidar and Boris Fyodorov quit in January, the Russian government has moderated its policy of ruthlessly limiting the sums paid out by the finance ministry to meet state debts.
Under Gaidar and Fyodorov, even traditionally well-paid coal and oil workers were often unable to feed their families, as wage payments were endlessly postponed. The buying power of the unpaid wages was slashed by inflation of around 20% a month.
The Yeltsin administration received a warning in November, when coal miners at Vorkuta in the far north of European Russia, and gas industry construction workers at Nadym in western Siberia, staged determined strikes that forced the government to make money available to cover wage debts.
Throughout December and much of January, however, the tight-money policies continued. Customers of the energy sector, state-owned firms as well as newly privatised ones, failed to pay their fuel bills. Before long many coal miners and gas and oil industry workers were again owed several months' wages.
In Vorkuta in mid-January, about 800 maintenance and construction workers struck to demand wages they had been owed since November. Then in early February all the coal mines in the city of Anzhero-Sudzhensk in the Kuzbass region of central Siberia were shut down by an indefinite strike.
On February 10, the Moscow daily Trud wrote of a wave of labour struggles rolling across the Kuzbass, Russia's largest coal-mining district. Strike committees had been set up in many Kuzbass mining centres. In the city of Prokopyevsk, 22 miners representing 13 coal enterprises began a hunger strike on February 9.
The Kuzbass miners demanded a new wage agreement, the payment by the state of all its debts and a government plan for resolving the crisis in the coal industry. Aman Tuleev, a former chairperson of the regional soviet in Kemerovo province, which includes the Kuzbass, warned Yeltsin of possible massive strikes.
Meanwhile, workers at two mines and a coal industry construction enterprise had gone on strike in Vorkuta. The last wages which the construction workers had received had been for October. As well as demanding prompt payment, the Vorkuta strikers raised a new and potentially explosive demand: a public audit of the finances of the state coal firm Rosugol, to determine just how its funds were being used. To reinforce their demands, more than 100 of the mine construction workers decided to remain underground.
On February 11 Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin met with a delegation from the trade unions and labour collectives of Siberia. Chernomyrdin reportedly told the unionists that the government's first priority was to relieve the burden of debts in agriculture; then would come the turn of industry. On the same day, however, he ordered the government to pay out funds to meet its debt to coal producers.
On February 14, the Vorkuta mine construction workers came to the surface after the local coal firm Vorkutaugol paid 500 million roubles (about US$320,000) in back wages. On February 15 the six-day strike came to an end. By this time, state debts to coal producers had more or less been paid up to January 1.
For some days in early February, the government faced the unnerving prospect of simultaneous strikes in the coal and oil industries. Many workers on the oilfields of western Siberia had not been paid since October.
On February 4 it was reported that the strike committee in the city of Nefteyugansk had resolved to cut off oil supplies if the wage arrears were not paid by February 10. In the oil industry centre of Uray in Tyumen Province, most of the local drilling teams were already on strike.
In an open letter to Yeltsin, leaders of the oil and gas construction union warned that workers were being provoked to take action during the winter, with potentially catastrophic consequences. Hurried promises from government officials brought a postponement of the oil shutdown, and on February 11 fuel and energy minister Yury Shafranik publicly urged the government to end the financial crisis in the sector.
On February 15, however, the vice-chairperson of the Oil and Gas Construction Workers Union was quoted as saying that workers in Nizhnevartovsk, one of the main centres of the Siberian oil industry, were likely to announce their readiness to strike.
For most people, the struggles on the Siberian oilfields are not a matter of immediate personal concern. But on February 10, the issue of state debts and unpaid wages stared as many as 60% of Russians in the face. Their television sets went blank. Apart from morning and evening newscasts, the rest of the broadcast diet — consisting mostly of game shows, disco dancing and Mexican soap operas — was not to be had. Television and radio technicians were on strike, demanding unpaid wages from as far back as November.
Originally, the strike by the Communications Workers Union was to have been indefinite, shutting down the two major state-owned television networks until some 80 billion roubles (US$50million) in government debts was paid and the workers received their salaries. But sensing the likely political damage, Prime Minister Chernomyrdin moved swiftly to head off the stoppage. On February 9, the day before the strike was to begin, Chernomyrdin instructed the Finance Ministry to find ways of making the payments.
Nevertheless, the first day of the stoppage went ahead — an impressive demonstration of the fact that large numbers of unionists have lost all faith in government promises, and feel that gains cannot be secure unless workers prove their strength in action.
At the centre of the next round of struggles, on February 15, were some of the worst paid of all Russian workers — tertiary education staff. Increases in teachers' wages and student stipends were promised in December, but have not yet been delivered. This has left the average professor on a starvation-level salary now worth less than US$40 per month.
According to chairperson of the Moscow Union of Scientists and Teachers Sergei Kuzin, the protest on February 15 shut down 145 universities and colleges for the day or suspended work for several hours. In Moscow, about 1000 teachers and students rallied at the entrance to Gorky Park, demanding the payment of all debts to the education sector and the indexation of salaries. The Moscow demonstration was one of at least 25 organised around the country.
Still to come are protest actions by workers in the timber and paper sector. Output in this area last year was barely half of 1990 levels, as the sector was hit by steep increases in the prices of equipment and rail freight, as customers failed to pay for deliveries, and as the government failed to issue promised credits. By early February, enterprises had been unable to pay wages in full for as much as five months.
From February 21, workers in all enterprises of the timber and paper sector were to halt shipments of their products. Unless wages are paid promptly, workers plan to come to Moscow and picket the Central Bank and Finance Ministry.
The labour actions since early February have not been massive, and there is no doubt that the majority of Russian workers remain confused and demoralised. Nevertheless, the struggles that have erupted have had a significant impact. They have helped convince government leaders that the decision to abandon hard-line monetarist policies was correct and inevitable.
However confused Russian workers might be ideologically, further months without pay were bound to turn their passivity into desperate courage.