Elina Bilevskaya, Alexandra Samarina
United Russia will measure pre-strike sentiments at major industrial facilities. The party leadership circulated this edict yesterday among the regional branches. The local branches have been told to monitor discontent among workers and report the data to Moscow, without taking independent actions to squash tensions. The information from the enterprises will be conveyed to the party's leader, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Immediately after Friday's meeting of the United Russia leadership with the party's leader, Vladimir Putin, the regional branches were ordered to urgently introduce monitoring of pre-strike sentiments at major industrial enterprises, Nezavisimaya Gazeta has learned.
According to some accounts, the mood during the meeting was anything but complacent. Sources inside the party told Nezavisimaya Gazeta about the main message of the talk: the leader demanded that United Russia face reality and do real work to minimise the harm of the crisis for the country and make projections regarding the crisis instead of discussing pieces of paper, such as versions of the party programme in clubs.
As a result, United Russia branches in the regions were told to start measuring sentiments among the workers. The party's chairman, Mr Putin, said he needed that information to have a clear picture of the consequences of the mounting financial and economic crisis, in order to put out the hotbeds of resistance in time.
The authorities are afraid that the crisis now hitting the regions may lead to full or partial stoppages of production, wage cuts, and mass layoffs in industry. All these circumstances could not only affect social sentiments but stir up political activity among the populace, which is not seen as a welcome development.
A source at one of the party's Interregional Coordinating Councils told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that the party branches in the regions have already received instructions on monitoring and have even started monitoring. "It is important for us to understand the mood at the factory floor to prevent discontent from spreading. We will be ready to let off steam so that nobody will rock the boat and call people to build barricades. We will explain and communicate, but not scare people," the source told Nezavisimaya Gazeta. The spokespeople for several Interregional Coordinating Councils dashed off to the centres of federal districts to supervise how the party recommendations are carried out.
The local representatives of United Russia are supposed to, at present, merely record the degree of discontent and pass on the information to the federal centre, refraining from any independent actions in difficult cases.
Mr Putin intends to keep the pre-strike situation under personal review.
Meanwhile, Deputy Chairman of the Independent Trade Union Federation, Oleg Neterebsky, sees nothing catastrophic, although he is not inclined to be complacent: "There must be vacant jobs where people could go to earn their bread and butter, if not caviar."
Against the background of threatened unemployment, NG's source points out, "the initiatives of the Ministry of Health and Social Development regarding the increase of quotas and bringing in manpower from outside sources have a logical explanation." Export-oriented sectors are facing a particular danger, in the opinion of the trade union boss: "they face shrinking sales". There will be no dramatic layoffs in the real sector, Mr Neterebsky is sure, because "the employer is no fool, he understands that if he gets of rid of workers today, tomorrow, when things are back to normal, he won't be able to find these people. First, due to a labour shortage, and second, unemployed people tend to become drunkards. Anyway, that category of people is simply dying out." In this context, he points out, industries should introduce a short week and short hours:
"This may lead to a wage freeze or cuts, a real risk that exists today."
Mr Neterebsky believes that the representatives of employees, employers, and the Government must sit down at the negotiating table, and that the banking sector, on which the health of the industrial sector depends, must be put in order: "unsecured loans have been made available to the banking sector at 7-8%, and business considers these funds to be its own. By the time the funds reach the national industry, the interest is 23-40%. Smart guys have come out of the woodwork in the regions, saying, "I am ready to procure a loan by such and such a date at such and such an interest rate. As a result, 8% turns into 23%, which is outrageous. The authorities must act firmly and cut the financial sector down to size." A third way out of the crisis is to unfreeze the public works programmes, like the Chinese do, for example, to build roads."
Karin Kleman, director of the Collective Action Institute, notes not only mounting protest, but a change in the form of occupational conflicts: "strikes are the most complicated form and people do not always resort to it; more frequently, we see rallies, the blocking of streets, and hunger strikes over non-payment of wages. A new form that has recently appeared is a collective dropping of tools in protest against non-payment of wages. This is only the beginning of the crisis, but I think if it continues and, as specialists say, lasts two or even three years, after a while people won't be able to survive on two-thirds of their wage, especially if one considers that many have already taken out loans and that prices are growing. Protests are sure to begin. They will become widespread if there are organisations capable of coordinating and supporting these actions."
