Underground Waterlines: Explaining Political Quiescence of Ukrainian Labor Unions Denys Gorbach
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Underground waterlines: Explaining political quiescence of Ukrainian labor unions Denys Gorbach To cite this version: Denys Gorbach. Underground waterlines: Explaining political quiescence of Ukrainian labor unions. Focaal - Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, Berghahn Journals, 2019, 2019 (84), pp.33 - 46. 10.3167/fcl.of.2019.032103. hal-02282463 HAL Id: hal-02282463 https://hal-sciencespo.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02282463 Submitted on 10 Sep 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Underground waterlines Explaining political quiescence of Ukrainian labor unions Denys Gorbach Abstract: In order to explore factors conditioning the political quietude of Ukrainian labor, this article analyzes ethnographic data collected at two large en- terprises: the Kyiv Metro and the privatized electricity supplier Kyivenergo. Focus- ing on a recent labor confl ict, I unpack various contexts condensed in it. I analyze the hegemonic confi guration developed in the early 1990s, at the workplace and at the macro level, and follow its later erosion. Th is confi guration has been based on labor hoarding, distribution of nonwage resources, and patronage networks, featuring the foreman as the nodal fi gure. On the macro scale, it relied on the me- diation by unions, supported by resources accumulated during the Soviet era and the economic boom of the 2000s. Th e depletion of these resources has spelled the ongoing crisis of this confi guration. Keywords: accumulation regimes, labor militancy, labor unions, post-socialism, Ukraine, workplace hegemony Th e largest mobilization event in Ukraine’s mod- Why does the unions’ passivist attitude allow ern history, the 2013–2014 Maidan protests, non-class-based agendas to monopolize polit- which led to the ousting of President Viktor Ya- ical discourse? In order to uncover the puzzle nukovych, started as a preparation for a general of the political quietude of Ukraine’s organized strike. However, the strike never happened, and labor, one must examine the historical conjunc- the labor agenda was quickly sidelined, despite ture that conditions and frames it, as well as the economic grievances being the background of critical junctions ensuring dynamic interaction the protests, and a million-strong trade union, between the shop fl oor, the enterprise, and the the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of state. Th e key to understanding labor’s passivity Ukraine (KVPU), formally participating in in Ukraine—and likely other post-Soviet coun- them. Its competitor, the Federation of Trade tries—lies in the peculiar development of he- Unions of Ukraine (FPU), boasting more than gemonic relations on these three levels. On the eight million members, has traditionally been shop fl oor, the legitimate voice of the workers is even more cautious, despite possessing massive the foreman rather than the formal union rep- organizational resources and oft en-favorable resentative. On the enterprise level, the union structure of political opportunity. is just an auxiliary wing of the management, Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology (2019): 1–14 © Stichting Focaal and Berghahn Books doi:10.3167/fcl.of.2019.032103 2 | Denys Gorbach having little real connection to the upper layers to political economy of (post-)socialism rhymes of union bureaucracy. Th e latter is an important well with the work of Hillel Ticktin (1992) on element of the national corporatist hegemonic Stalinist social contract at and beyond the work- pact ensuring social peace, but it cannot really place, viewing it as a product of the contradic- pull out and initiate serious political mobiliza- tions of Soviet political economy, characterized tion. On all these levels, patronage networks by chronic shortage, lack of profi t drive, and prevail over the logic of mass mobilization. prevalence of covert “perverted class struggle” Th ese relations can be interpreted as hege- (S. Clarke 1993a; Filtzer 1992). Th is approach monic not only because they are built on a set of can be discussed with “corporatist” interpreta- shared “common sense” values and norms but tions of CEE “labor weakness” (Crowley 1997, also because these principles and standards of 2004; Ost 2000) and political institutions (Kubi- behavior are imposed by a “historical bloc” of cek 2004; Way 2015), which oft en employ his- dominant and dominated social collective ac- torical institutionalist optics. tors. In this article, I argue that this historical However, the neo-institutionalist tendency bloc is currently being dismantled on all levels toward compartmentalization and static macro in the course of a general conjunctural crisis, analysis should be balanced by “political econ- which began about a decade ago. Th e coming omy of personhood” (Kalb 2014) and critical conjuncture seems to rely on a greater bureau- junctions approach, inspired by Gramscian cratic control on the shop fl oor, the elimination categories of class and hegemony (Kalb and of the union at the enterprise level, and the Tak 2006). Don Kalb (2002) uses these optics prevalence of clientelist populist politics over to make an important point about diverging bureaucratic inertia on the macro scale. First, I strategies of neoliberal labor shedding in the will give a brief literature overview and present Eastern EU and continuing labor hoarding in my theoretical frameworks and fi eld sites. Th en, the former USSR. Both areas have been tradi- I will trace the dynamics of the post-Soviet tionally associated with “labor weakness,” but Ukrainian peak-level hegemonic pact. Next, I the latest literature on Eastern EU questions will tell the story of an industrial confl ict and this diagnosis. describe the grounded realities of sustaining Adam Mrozowicki (2014) shows how skilled hegemony at the post-Soviet workplace. Finally, workers of the automotive sector across the I will discuss some new trends observed in the region managed to overcome the oft en-cited fi eld. Th ese fi ndings will be summed up and put structural diffi culties and build impressive or- into a wider context in the conclusion. ganizing capacity. In the Polish case, union re- Reacting to the debate on Taylorist labor vitalization began in late 2000s, signifying the deskilling (Braverman [1974] 1998), Michael end of the “transition”-era weakness (Bernaciak Burawoy (1979) off ered less linear and determin- and Lis 2017). Similar dynamics are observed ist optics by “taking Gramsci to the workplace” among Romanian autoworkers (Adăscăliței and and conceptualizing “hegemonic” versus “des- Guga 2017). Th is revival is associated with the potic” factory regimes. Th is article seeks to build advent and stabilization of “real capitalism,” on this general approach to the analysis of “rela- which is yet to happen in post-Soviet countries tions in and of production.” It was also Burawoy like Ukraine and Russia, where workers are de- who gave a thorough treatment to post-socialist mobilized, but also partially protected, by qua- power relations and conventions (Burawoy and si-corporatist social pacts (Ashwin and Clarke Krotov 1993; Burawoy et al. 2000). He and Kath- 2003; Mandel 2004; Varga 2014). Th is work will erine Verdery (1999) set up the stage for anthro- contribute to a better understanding of the cur- pology of labor in Central and Eastern Europe rent dynamics in this second realm. (CEE), a fi eld laden with confl icting approaches. To conceptualize these dynamics, I will sum- Th us, Verdery’s (1996) institutionalist approach mon yet another part of Gramscian theoretical Underground waterlines | 3 legacy, namely conjunctural analysis (J. Clarke pact” tied the foreman’s legitimacy to his readi- 2014), which allows me to interpret hegemonic ness to disregard offi cial rules. Conversely, line confi gurations observed at diff erent levels as managers covered up workers who break formal parts of one conjuncture and to historicize the rules but penalized those who transgress infor- latter, shedding light on its current crisis and mal norms. Th e two sides have built relations sketching the contours of the conjuncture to where mutual trust and informal conventions come. My ethnographic data were collected were more important than offi cial norms. during a round of fi eldwork conducted in Kyiv, Trade unions, preoccupied with legal rules, Ukraine, from January to March 2017. I con- were an alien element in this confi guration. ducted 24 semi-structured and unstructured Th ey provided legal advice and protection to in-depth interviews with workers and union individual workers and became responsible for activists of two large companies: the Kyiv Metro distributing material goods and social services and the privatized energy supplier Kyivenergo. among workers. As part of the “bosses” team, Th ese fi eld sites were chosen for their big size they commanded very little trust from workers. and structural position, which would allow hy- Th e Soviet hegemonic factory regime, then, was pothetical strikers there to control important the product of the “historical bloc” between the infrastructural bottlenecks in Kyiv, thus infl u- management and the (skilled male) workforce, encing wider sociopolitical agenda. Metro is a where the former shaped its own hegemonic municipal enterprise, while Kyivenergo was pri- agenda by incorporating into it the interests of vatized several years ago; this diff erence could the latter. Th e workers believe the bosses, who help clarify the role of ownership structure in represent them up above, deliver as much as is the development of a factory regime and work- objectively possible, but they will not tolerate a ers’ militancy.