Left.ru ________________________________________________________________________________

Letter to those in the struggle for the Labor Code.
Source http://www.left.ru/2001/3/kzot16.html
translation: Mark Harris, 20 February 2001

If we are dragged into the struggle for the Labor Code in the tail of the Federation of Independent Unions of Russia (FIUR) and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), then in order to dissipate the stench of treachery (I, like the author of the report “Draft 8 – the stench of treachery” continue to use the term stench of treachery), that we are such weak people, and therefore must join with the supporters of the draft of the Eight, and even create a compromise draft with them, then we will teach our unions to stink of treachery.

In the beginning of December, 2000 the government and the Unity bloc were ready to postpone the question of the Labor Code to the spring.  The deputy from the Union of Right Forces (URF) said to the deputies of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), let the people quietly greet the new year, don’t make them march with banners! – but the CPRF to the end aimed at the adoption in December 2000 of its stinking treachery, their draft of the Eight. In order to cry afterwards that the CPRF and FIUR wisely defended the workers from the government by means of this compromise!  In this situation, to take part in the December action of the FIUR means to take part in a policy of stinking treachery.

If we constantly retreat, then we are training a union movement of stinking traitors, who will start to stink from fear at the mere mention of the word REVOLUTION!  Now I direct this Open Letter to the participants in the Labor Code Campaign, since in 2000 we almost failed, by being inactive from June till November 2000.

When in a favorable period our comrades and we founded a trade union school in Seversk, (Siberia), I explained the thought thus:  “We will always loose if the initiative is always with our class adversaries!”  Until the director stops paying wages, or begins laying off workers, our excellent left unions are sleeping.

Until our class enemies begin the hearings on the Labor Code in the Duma – will we be sleeping again?  Who, in this manner, has the initiative in the current class struggle? – our enemies.  They moved the hearings on the Labor Code draft to April, and now to June.  Now it seems that the mood might be for autumn of 2001.  Let’s sleep.  Putin & Co in the first instance simply concentrate their powers on political reform: the new law on parties, modifying the constitution to have a vice president, and seven years for Putin, and so forth.  The class enemy does not conduct an immediate attack on social rights, he prepares his political weapons.  But among us the prevalent mood is:  Let’s rest until autumn.

Although the government drafts of the bill, including one by the Eight, are in the Duma, and a counteroffensive is necessary, in order to knock it out of there!  Silence! So far I received no support. ”Defense of Labor” could declare such a counteroffensive and plan it for the May Day of 2001.  Until 17 May 2000 this dwarf union alone was unafraid to oppose the government draft bill, unifying around itself the FIUR organizations, the CPRF, the Russian Communist Workers’ Party (RCWP), and the parliaments of many regions of the Russian Federation.  The struggle for the Labor Code is the training ground of our spirit.  It is a test of our determination.  This is a sort of military training.

But besides, we need to do what the School of Labor Democracy did – to create a system of labor schools, where not just labor activists will be educated, but gradually union members one and all.  And not merely on questions of the current technical struggles in the courts, in collective bargaining, protection of labor, etc, but also the discussion of the principles and goals of the workers’ movement.  After this, it will be possible to organize the mass distribution of a political workers newspaper.  And not just one.  There is “Workers’ Democracy”, “Workers’ Affairs”, which talk about the current struggle, and debate, among other things about “state capitalism”, etc, etc.  So there will be place to discuss these issues collectively and on this basis to teach independent thinking and then, independent action to all members of the labor movement, and not only the little group of union activists.  

In any case, after 2-3 weeks of work in the beginning of 2000, before the emergency of the split in Seversk (organized by a little group of those who would like to profit at the expense of union dues; these gentlemen fiercely hate our union schools, since they in advance render superfluous the services of these lawyers of misfortune), the leaders of the union cell saw themselves in the future as organizers and representatives of such shop schools.  We organized referenda, in order to organize such schools directly in the shops, on the basis of current interest and needs in trade union education.

For the time being, this does not exist, for the time being a system cannot be created that is capable of resisting the bourgeoise brainwashing of the workers to the effect that all “Labor Politics” of our parties and unions is reduced to the walls of the Duma, a few pickets, and cyber space.  As to “ordinary” members, they will go on the picket line in the best instance propelled along by the authority of the activist, and in the worst, as under statute labor.  Since there already is a proposal to take into account the attendance of members of the union, just as in the “kindly” old Soviet unions.

The Party of Proletarian Dictatorship from Samara imagines an average worker--intimidated by his foreman and boss, brainwashed by television, who wouldn’t even want to walk a picket line for the Labor Code campaign--as a “tough proletarian” ready for the uprising.   But we, who everyday deal with real workers, have no claim to such foolishness.  Moreover the counterrevolutionary foolishness.

If the RWP (Revolutionary Workers Party – a Russian Trotskyist group of Militant’s tendency - translator) has decided to concentrate on work in the FIUR – we wish them well.  But if someone, let it be not the RWP, while calling himself by a fine revolutionary word, will thunder against us because we do not submit ourselves to the actions of the FIUR (“this mass organization with tens of millions of workers”), and do not want to realize the plans of these enemies of the workers movement, then a fight would be unavoidable.  Almost 100% of the “members” of the FIUR, comrade Biets (the leader of RWP –translator), don’t even know the abbreviation FIUR, and further, don’t even know the name of its boss, Shmakov.  More than half of them are likely not to know the names of their local’s bosses, and 80% can’t recognize their bosses by their faces. They know the shop bosses by name and by face, but also know their price!

For the last decade the FIUR has learned how to organize mass actions for surrendering the social gains of wage workers.  In 10 years they have brought this art to perfection by becoming very skillful in presenting these betrayals as worthy of highest regard.   They can demonstrate this skill shortly in this Labor Code campaign.  To ruin the existing labor legislation is extremely simple.  But not to win it.  According to the law of conservation of energy, a struggle on the scope of the October revolution will be required, in order to win back this labor legislation from the bourgeoisie.  

After they destroy the Labor Code (the foundation of labor legislation), there will follow another 10 years of revisions for laws on trade unions (so that they comply with the stinking Labor Code draft of the scummy Eight), collective bargaining, collective complaints, employment and pension counterreform.  Uninterrupted work record and other sacred cows of Soviet labor legislation will mean nothing if Pochinok (Russian minister of labor – translator; see his interview in “Moscow Komsomol” at the beginning of August of 2000) succeeds in making individual labor contracts the rule rather than exception.  All new labor unions today owe their existence to current (Soviet) labor legislation.

Having surrendered this Labor Code, in the next 10 years we, like the lowest of traitors, will be giving up, piece after piece, the remainder of our labor legislation, explaining to members of our unions, that it is “unavoidable” and “objective,” that globalism attacks us and that all over the world workers are in retreat.  That is, all our left unions will go through a 10 year school of surrender, treachery, retreat and justification of such a protracted stinking retreat.

This is the price of our inactivity, with some us even being ready to take part in the general stinking spectacle of  the FIUR and the CPRF scum, who have “ 10 million members, masses” etc.

Igor Kuznetsov,
co-chair,  Multiregional Alliance of Workers Unions “Defense of Labor”,
Secretary of the Siberian bureau of the Marxist Workers Party.
 

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