INT’L LABOUR DAY-RUSSIA: May Day Again, Sort Of

By Kester Kenn Klomegah Reprint | | Print |

Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, Apr 30 2006 (IPS) - Tens of thousands will take to streets already lined with workers flags in Russia May Day to demand a better life in all sorts of ways.
     It used to be the day of the workers. So the communists will again be out on the streets, but in the company of liberals, nationalists and human rights activists.

Tens of thousands will take to streets already lined with workers flags in Russia May Day to demand a better life in all sorts of ways.

It used to be the day of the workers. So the communists will again be out on the streets, but in the company of liberals, nationalists and human rights activists. Their collective demands range from better wages and payment of overdue salaries to housing, political freedom, and democracy.

May 1, known as the Day of Workers’ Solidarity in Soviet times, was renamed in 1996 as the Day of Peace and Labour by first Russian President Boris Yeltsin. This year marks the 120th anniversary of May Day parades.

Some 2.5 million people are expected to march through Russia’s streets, the Confederation of Trade Unions, an umbrella group, said in a statement. About 700 rallies will be held across the country.

Workers will be protesting “against the political regime and the government social reforms that scrapped state benefits for millions of pensioners, and to demand outstanding debt arrears and workers’ rights,” Confederation of Trade Unions advisor Sergey Gerashimenko told IPS.

Opposition and liberal democrat parties and supporters will raise questions on democracy and human rights, and protest against media censorship, he said. “We believe that the lack of improving macroeconomic polices are particular cause for concern for workers.”

The government on its part has pointed to improvements. The Federal State Statistics Service said last week that wage arrears had come down by 13.3 percent March 30 after payment was made to 1.9 million state employees.

“We have real opportunities for breakthrough in certain areas, and the short-term objectives involve raising salaries of individual categories of government paid workers,” said first deputy prime minister Dmitry Medvedev. But improving government salaries will take several years, he added.

The Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party and several other opposition groups are meanwhile protesting the simultaneous rise in housing rent, and in the cost of domestic utilities and maintenance fees because of the Cabinet’s moves to reduce subsidies.

Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov has urged the government to use some of its windfall oil revenues to pay for long-needed overhaul of aging utilities and apartment buildings.

“The money for the overhaul must come from the huge state reserves, not from the impoverished population,” he said at a rally ahead of the May Day demonstrations.. Protestors said the quality of maintenance services was not rising with the costs.

“It’s impermissible and irrelevant to ask people to pay for utilities when their incomes are already extremely low and would not stimulate labour efficiency,” Liberal Democratic Party spokeswoman Marina Ivanova told IPS.

Organised labour is a key factor in accomplishing the basic goals of economic development, but labour must also be duly compensated, she said. The government must collaborate with workers’ associations and trade unions to ensure improved working conditions, she demanded.

Trade unions are finding it difficult to organise workers in the face of the economic changes following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, Sten Petersen, an official from the International Labour Organisation in Moscow told IPS.

“They still have a role a play to deal with indiscriminate violation of workers’ rights and to influence policies directly affecting productivity,” Petersen said. “The economic stability after 2000 can become a factor for effective mobilisation and organisation, but they have to adopt a new approach.”

A more refined system of resolving labour disputes could replace mass demonstrations, he said. “What is needed these days largely relates to questions of strategies and traditions to bring the government to the negotiating table and to resolve any thorny workers’ issues which affect production and the economy.”

Unions need to get involved in developing collective action plans, participate in decision making processes and pursue political demands, Petersen said.