Containing Militancy: Workers, Trade Unions and Factory Regimes in Ukraine

Abstract

Seeking to understand the variation in the militancy of Eastern European workers, the article argues in favor of a research agenda that places the workplace and the constraints it places on workers’ action at the center of analysis. Partly based on recent fieldwork at five plants organized by the Union of Auto- and Farm-Machine Building of Ukraine, the article explores the reasons for the difference between the conciliatory approach of organized labor at several influential automobile plants and the more militant workers in Ukraine's farm-machine sector.