Strikes Rare in Labor Transition

One of the most astounding features of Russia's transition has been the lack of industrial action by the country's workers -- the rabochiye. Although the pain of transition has been severe, the number of strikes in Russia has been incredibly low. Since 1990, real measured wages have fallen almost 60 percent and open unemployment -- next to nothing under the Soviet regime -- has risen to 8.5 percent of the labor force. Set these miseries against a backdrop of collectivist traditions and a tense political scene and contemporary Russia seems a fertile breeding ground for labor unrest.


Yet in contrast to siren calls about riots in Russia's streets, exactly the opposite has been the case. At a national level, Russia has experienced next to no industrial action. In the United Kingdom during the 1980s, almost 5 percent of the workforce undertook strike action annually. The industrial dogfights of the previous decade meant that during the 1970s the figure was as high as 11 percent in Britain, 14 percent in Spain and a staggering 47 percent in Italy. In Russia, during 1994, the total number of workers involved in strike action admittedly increased by almost one-third. But the number of workers who went on strike during the year was very low, totaling a mere one-fifth of one percentage point of the entire labor force.


Figures recently released by the State Statistics Committee reveal that 1995 has marked a slight deterioration in Russia's industrial relations. On one hand, the number of strikes increased considerably -- almost 9,000 organizations experienced strike action during the year, compared with only 514 in 1994. On the other hand, the average number of participants per strike was cut by more than half -- from 248 workers to 117. Also, during the second half of 1995, the average number of working days lost per strike fell from 227 to 70 compared with the second half of 1994.


In sum, during 1995, the number of Russian workers involved in strikes rose to 0.7 percent of the work force -- not only negligible by international standards, but still less than Japan. Moreover, the large increase in the number of strikes last year was driven entirely by action among one group of employees -- almost 96 percent of Russian strikes in 1995 were in the educational sector.


The main reason for strike action among educational workers is low wages. While Soviet Russia prided itself on its well-funded schools and technical colleges, educational wages plummeted to 77 percent of the average wage in 1991, falling further to 64 percent in 1992. They have yet to recover -- for most of 1995, they remained below 65 percent. In fact these educational wage inequalities are made worse when it is considered that the sector also suffers disproportionately from wage arrears.


In contrast to the education sector, across the entire country only 11 construction firms experienced strikes during 1995. This is because even declared wages -- let alone those actually paid -- are almost twice the average wage and the number of construction firms with wage arrears fell from 32 percent to 25 percent during the year.


The relative industrial harmony of the construction sector may be seen as atypical. But the observation that Russia has experienced next to no industrial action since 1991 remains very much intact -- and in some sense a mystery.


One reason for the lack of strikes is a lack of leadership. Many experienced trade union activists -- those able to mobilize and motivate workers -- have already made the switch to commerce or politics. More generally, given the new opportunities thrown up by Russia's transition, large numbers of workers are more likely to use "exit" rather than "voice" to influence their situation -- that is, the tendency is to leave a bad job for a better one, rather than to strike in protest. During 1994, rehiring in Russia was close to 20 percent, indicating that despite rising unemployment, the country's labor market is a buoyant as those in Germany and Britain.


Another reason for the low number of strikes is employment in the informal economy. Those workers with the practical and personal skills necessary to organize a strike are these days far more likely to exert their energy trading consumer durables or setting up cottage manufacturing industries than they are to stand outside a factory in the cold.


In fact, a major reason for the small number of strikes in Russia is so-called segmentation -- or differentiation -- among workers likely to strike. Potential strikers fall into two very distinct camps. One camp is ill-disposed to the market and attempts to use strike action to lobby for an increase in state paternalism -- demanding more federal subsidies and job protection. Russia's striking teachers fall into this camp.


Another camp are highly skilled pro-market workers with considerable bargaining leverage who use industrial unrest to promote not employment but wage maximization. They are more likely to lobby for a labor shake-out rather than to protect jobs. The differentiation between these two groups in part explains the lack of coordination among Russian workers who might otherwise organize strikes.


The number of enterprises experiencing strike action has increased markedly since the Duma elections in December 1995. The main reason has been industrial action by teachers in protest of wage arrears. But there have also been well-publicized strikes at Promtraktor in Chuvashiya, Russia's largest tractor plant, as well as the indebted ZiL truck plant in Moscow. And at the beginning of February, around half a million miners across the country went on strike for two days.


Although isolated, these strikes are no joke. Nor are the recent hunger strikes by technical airport staff in the crippled ex-textile region of Ivanovo. But these are isolated incidents often instigated by Communist party activists -- the undeniable reality is that industrial action in Russia is minimal. Workers tend to strike in the midst of the industrial wind-down -- Europe in the 1970s, Britain in the 1920s. In instances of industrial windup -- Japan in the 1950s, or Russia today, the tendency among workers -- even former tovarishchi -- is to look after oneself.