Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

LYUDMYLA REFERENCES LITERATUR VOLYNETS
INDEPENDENT TRADE UNIONS
Since 1989 in the Eastern region of Ukrainian
Donbass there have emerged first striking
committees among miners giving rise to
independent bottom-up unions. These unions
emerged in the opposition to the activities of
the existing miners’ trade unions that proved
indefinite to workers’ growing complaints.
As no trade union law existed at that point
of time in the Soviet Union, miners’ unions
acquired legitimacy and recognition by the
scale of their collective action. Miners’ strikes
across the Donbass were partly responsible for
the collapse of the socialist system (Crowley
2000). Similar initiatives emerged among
transportation workers.
The years before 1998 became the years of
establishment, structuring and consolidation
of the oppositional trade union movement
of Ukraine identified in the literature as new,
independent, free, or alternative. The overall
situation within trade unions made it clear
that a solely sectoral unionism has hardly
any prospects in the view of the continuing
dominance of the ex-official trade unions.
Hence, it was necessary to structure and improve
the shape and expand this unionism into other
sectors. Such understanding prompted leaders
of independent unions to launch quite early the
debate on spurring workers’ solidarity across
the mining sector frontiers. Significant in this
regard was the training on organizing provided
by the Solidarity centre of the American unions
AFL-CIO.
In the course of the structural consolidation
of the independent trade union movement,
the lack of the united vision of how this
unionism should look became evident.
The crisis originated in the split among the
leaders of different independent unions 35 in
their negotiations of the all-Ukrainian strike
planned on 18 January 1994 that aimed at
the retreat of the then Prime-Minister. This
resulted in the withdrawal of some unions from
the first Free Trade Unions Association; and
the Association dissolved. Upcoming actions
and strikes were organized by separate branch
trade unions in an uncoordinated manner, first
of all by miners and railway drivers.
Meanwhile, as the economic situation
worsened and workers’ wages could not even
ensure the necessary food for workers, miners
again went on strike. In the course of the
miners’ march to Kiev in 1996, organized
by the Independent Miners’ Union, workers
walked 600 km to the capital city of Ukraine
and demanded the payment of wages arrears.
Afterward, under the autocratic Presidency
of Kuchma, the leaders of the march were
threatened with imprisonment. Under threat
of a new strike, the government had to stop
the criminal allegations against union leaders.
However, independent unions offices were
illegally searched, their safes seized and their
documentation stolen. In answer to this
persecution, miners went on hunger strike.
In October 1996, new attempts to consolidate
independent unions were undertaken.
Leaders of some independent unions
established Consultative Council of Seite page 233
trade unions (miners, railway workers,
metro workers, textile workers) that
grew in 1997 in the Association, and changed
in 1998 into the Confederation of Free Trade
Unions of Ukraine (KVPU). It spread its