New law curbing the right to
strike could pose biggest
challenge yet for perestroika.

By MARC YOUNG
and JOHN MacLENNAN

Communists have always championed
the right to strike under capitalism, recog-
nizing job action as one of the key means by
which the working class defends its inter-
ests. But when the same question is exam-
ined in the context of a socialist economy,
answers are not always patently obvious.

Some communists were uncomfortable
with the assumption that because workers
constitute the ruling class under socialism,
there were never times when particular
groups saw their rights and interests
undermined and would have benefitted
from utilizing, or threatening to utilize, the
right to strike — which they legally had.

But another argument held sway. It went
like this: there is no exploiting class in the
Soviet Union (nor in Bulgaria, Romania,
the GDR), and hence, there are no antago-
nistic contradictions.

Workers don’t need to strike against a

workers’ state. They'll get looked after, sort
of automatically, went the assumption.
Many Communist parties, virtually all of
the ruling ones, talked a lot about the “gua-
rantees”’ of the new system.

There was obviously something to the
latter argument. Socialist countries were rid
of their capitalist class and pursued policies
that served many vital working class inter-
ests. But the simplistic, reductionist conclu-
sions drawn were out of line.

As many other Communist parties and
individuals had maintained for some time,
there was a good deal more to argument
one.

Socialist re-structuring adds a new
urgency to this debate. Developing the
socialist market ina democratic fashion will
require real vigilance on the part of trade
unions. Self-financing firms will feel new
pressures to rationalize and economize.
Workers, through elected plant collectives,
will have a keen responsibility for produc-
tion, but they will also need recourse to their
own organizations to protect themselves
when managers put production targets over
the interests of the workforce.

That problem already exists and will con-
tinue for some time.

At the same time, the traditional role of
trade union leaders in bureaucratic social-
ism as conveyor belts for production orders
will, of necessity, cease.

When the Soviet parliament passed new
labour legislation in October, it clearly had
a couple of things in mind. The first cer-
tainly ran along the lines of the above con-
clusions.

That accounts for the inclusion of a pro-
vision in the main law on the right to strike
for the great majority of workers. It stipu-
lates a five-day period during which time a
committee, made up of equal numbers of
management and worker representatives,
would seek a resolution to disputes. That
would be followed by a week of non-
binding arbitration. Only then, if a settle-
ment is not achieved, could job action begin.

However, the Soviet legislature also con-
sidered the tenuous state of the national
economy, which presumably accounted for
the following emergency legislation.

“On Urgent Measures to Ensure the
Uninterrupted Functioning of Railway
Transport and Basic Sectors of the National
Economy,” empowers all levels of Soviet
government to quell job action that threat-
ens the functioning of transport, with the

assistance of either internal security or
Defence Ministry troops.

The Soviet economy is, apart from being
highly centralized, deeply dependent upon
rail arteries for its survival. Strikes can be
particularly devastating in a situation in
which the movement of supplies and goods
is less than top notch at the best of times.

More significant is the accompanying leg-
islation regarded by its designers as a ““per-
manent” fixture — a new cornerstone —
of the labour code. It includes the right to
strike provisions detailed above, but it also
contains restrictions and a wide-ranging
“essential services” clause.

The law bans strikes aimed at the violent
overthrow of the state or designed to pro-
mote positions undermining the equality of
all Soviet ethnic groups. It does not recog-
nize job actions that fail to follow the cor-
rect procedure.

The restrictions are undoubtedly a
response to conflicts like the one between
Soviet Armenians and Azerbaijanis and the
latter’s blockade of food shipments to
Nagorno Karabakh. The clause contains
little that can be objected to, although it
could be argued that such incidents could be
handled on a case by case basis.

However, in addition, to quote TASS,
“the law bans strikes threatening the life or
health of people, as well as labour actions at
enterprises of the railway and city public
transport, civil aviation, communications,
power engineering and defence industries,
state bodies and organizations assigned to
ensure defence capability, law and order
and national security.”

Workers in these sectors may appeal
directly to legislative bodies.

That section of the legislation appears to
represent an administrative approach to
fundamentally political questions. If the
next few years of restructuring in the USSR
are crucial and delicate, then workers in
critical sectors have to be won politically to
the perestroika project.

To accomplish that, they’ll require that
government treat them as the true masters
of their own state. And that means not
depriving them of the right to withdraw
their labour,

Trade union leaders, particularly at the
centre, who supported the clause and
indeed had a role in drafting the law, have

LB eRR T eFee SA

{ROOT

SOVIET HEALTH CARE WORKERS ...
essential service provisions in new legislation.

felt the heat from members who accuse
them of selling out the rank and file. They
might have drawn some lessons from the
recent coal miners’ strikes. When the exist-
ing trade union structures and leadership
failed to champion the rights of the miners,
the miners found new ones.

The legislation also points to contradic-
tions facing socialism as it tries to overhaul
its political structures. The last round of
open elections to the Supreme Soviet, pro-
duced a parliament in which only 19 per
cent of deputies are workers.

Without doubt there is public support for
this legislation. There is an element of
“strike weariness” among the Soviet popu-
lation. According to Goskostat (Soviet type
Stats-Can) the Soviet economy grew only

SUPREME SOVIET ... passed new legislation in October.

among several groups included under

one per cent this year compared to 2.7 per
cent last year. Seven million working days
were lost in strikes in the first nine months
of 1989 and 2.3 million were lost in Sep-
tember alone.

As the long cold winter months
approach, some Soviets are wondering if
they are going to be left to freeze in the dark.

However, with the exception of the “‘eth-
nic” strikes, observers say workers have
been far from reckless in exercising the
strike weapon. To use the miners’ as an
example again, both the miners and the
steelworkers who supported them, ensured
there was enough coal supplied to keep the
steel furnaces operating. Community sup-
port committees were formed and strikers
did their best to ensure as few disruptions to
the public as possible, and for this they were
awarded unprecedented local support.

Finally, one has to wonder what an
essential services clause is likely to accomp-
lish on any front. It isn’t likely to keep
people on the job if they don’t want to be
there. Strikes that workers feel are necessary
are bound to occur.

The state, of course, can use force to
prevent them, but that would be quite
inconsistent with the trend in current Soviet
politics, and would only backfire on the
government and undermine support for
perestroika.

More than one observer has suggested
that even in the short term the “permanent”
piece of Soviet labour law is transitory. Life
itself may soon impel legislators to give up
on the “essential services” restrictions.

If nothing else, recent events in the social-
ist world teach us how dangerous it can be
to call anything the last word. Nonetheless,
progressives rightly regard what’s on the
books now with trepidation, and wait with
interest and concern to see what develops.

Pacific Tribune, December 4, 1989 « 7