LABOUR-UKRAINE: Millions of Workers ‘Suffering Acutely’, says ILO

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Aug 23 2001 (IPS) - Millions of workers in the Ukraine are living in appallingly difficult conditions, 10 years after the former Soviet republic became an independent state, reports a new study by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

The ILO’s “People’s Security Survey” on the Ukraine found a dismal panorama in what it described as a potentially prosperous eastern European country.

A majority of the Ukraine’s 50 million people live in poverty, said one member of the team that conducted the survey, Làszlò Zsoldos, who pointed out that per capita household income of 17 dollars a month “puts the average Ukrainian deep in the poverty zone of the world’s population.”

He added that more than 83 percent of the poll’s 8,200 respondents classified themselves as “not well off” or “badly off.”

According to the researchers, “there is no doubt that poor health is a feature of Ukrainian society, in addition to the pervasive long-term effects of the Chernobyl [nuclear] accident of 1986. Symptomatic of this, it has been reported that 60 percent of military conscripts have some kind of chronic illness or disability.”

The ILO report calls for “urgent remedies” for problems like an inadequate diet, poor living and working conditions, and exposure to high levels of pollution.

The team of researchers stressed that the badly weakened state must be strengthened in order for it to be able to provide social protection and basic services for “a larger proportion” of the population.

People no longer turn to government offices when they are battered by the effects of the social and economic crisis, says the survey.

Most of those interviewed put the real unemployment rate at around 40 percent of the economically active population – over three times the government’s estimate.

But employment in the Ukraine is unique in that more than half of the workers are women – a phenomenon that is not seen anywhere else in the world, according to the ILO.

The population has shrunk by almost two million since the Ukraine became an independent republic in 1991, largely due to the drop in life expectancy among men.

The percentage of workers organised in labour unions is lower than claimed, and is dropping, says the report, which puts the proportion at 44 percent. The survey also indicates that less than half of all workers hold a positive view of trade unions.

Only 22 percent of the jobless receive steady unemployment benefits.

One-third of the heads of households interviewed said they had fallen behind in paying the rent, and nearly half were unable to pay their gas and electricity bills, implying “persistent insecurity at home, to complement that characterising their jobs,” says the study.

Most respondents said they could not afford to feed their families on their incomes – a problem that affected 75 percent of industrial workers, 82 percent of pensioners, 65.8 percent of rural workers and farmers, 64.1 percent of students, 70.8 percent of private sector workers, 83.7 percent of the unemployed and 72.2 percent of public employees.

Most Ukrainians have survived the economic collapse of the past decade thanks to small informal enterprises, and their garden plots, the source of food as well as extra income.

But while the vast majority of the population is falling deeper and deeper into poverty, a “tiny minority” enjoys “enormous wealth by national standards,” says the report, which points to “a new phenomenon…rapidly growing inequality.”

In 1997, there were 17 millionaires as reported by the State Tax Administration of Ukraine, based on officially declared incomes. That number rose to 30 in 1998, 40 in 1999 and 1,221 last year.

This small minority is living in a time of prosperity, and “there should be no doubt that their incomes and assets are seriously underestimated, because they have the means of disguising” their wealth and not declaring it, the researchers added.

The report, presented by ILO officials Zsoldos and Guy Standing, said the “desperate” situation in the Ukrainian labour market had led to a decline in life expectancy and to a growing wave of emigration to central and western Europe.

“Many millions of workers are suffering acutely. Their plight deserves more attention than it has received,” the ILO declared.

The Geneva-based international body is preparing similar reports on the social situation in Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, China, Hungary, India (Gujarat), Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa and Tanzania.