Labour protest and industrial peace: Russian steelworkers’ encounters with economic reforms and unravelling social protections

Abstract

The collapse of the Soviet Union brought a series of economic reforms: privatization, increased foreign direct investment and weakened benefits. Correspondingly, some scholars expected trade unions to serve as a major contribution to the development of a democratic civil society that would serve as a Polanyian double movement to these disruptive reforms. However, Russia’s steelworkers have stood out as particularly weak and unwilling to strike due to their dependence on their employer for almost all aspects of their livelihoods. But is this lack of large, legally sanctioned and disruptive strikes truly evidence of worker quiescence and weak trade unions? Using an analysis of local newspaper accounts and archival documents to process-trace the interactions of workers, trade unions and management, this paper offers a counter-argument to the generalizations of past studies. Specifically, protests tend to be more frequent and extreme when there is union competition within a company and when foreign owners violate labour laws. Unions tend to engage in non-protest bargaining strategies when companies face bankruptcy or closure under domestic ownership. Because Russia was an early case of the rapid liberalization reforms that have been broadly recommended to developing and post-communist countries, a closer reading of on-the-ground conditions and protest aids in a broader understanding of the variation in backlash to global capitalism.