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 Violation of workers’ rights in Belarus

Solidarity grows as Belarusian Trade Unions face State clampdown
The trade unions of Belarus face tough opposition from a government that is out to undermine their organizing and their finances.

But the country’s unions are not giving in. Certainly, they are continuing their real efforts to reopen a dialogue with the government. Up to now, however, all their approaches have been spurned. So the unions are also gearing up for a day of national protest in March. At the same time, they are challenging anti-labour decrees in the courts.

Anti-Unions Laws
Human rights abuses in Belarus have brought condemnation of President Alexander Lukashenko at home and abroad. In particular, his government has been accused of curbing freedom of association - the cornerstone of independent trade unionism.

Freedom of association is a core value of the ILO, whose supervisory bodies have issued strong criticisms of the Lukashenko government. The world’s worker, employer and government representatives meet on equal terms within the ILO. It adopts and supervises international standards on trade union rights and other labour issues. These are the nearest thing that the world has to a code of international labour legislation. The ILO has clearly asked the Belarusian authorities to stop any interference in trade union independence and not misuse registration procedures as an instrument to deny trade unions legal status.

Despite all the strictures, the Lukashenko government has further hardened its anti-union line. Last December, it abolished the check-off system for union dues. This was just the latest in a long series of anti-union measures.

The unions are now mounting a legal challenge to the decree against check-offs. They argue that the ban breaches current collective agreements, violates Belarussian labour law and contradicts a ruling by the constitutional court.

Lukashenko is unrepentant. Interviewed by the news agency Belapan on February 1, he insisted that he would not revoke the decree. He also described the unions as an “army of idlers”.

Such attitudes are by no means new. Over the past few years, the Belarussian authorities have tried to manipulate trade union congresses in a bid to secure the election of pro-government officers. Trade union bank accounts have been frozen. Local union branches have been pressed to pull out of their national unions.

Elected union officers have been barred from entering workplaces – even when they brandished court orders granting them access. Workers have been dismissed for taking part in union activities or have been threatened with dismissal if they do not leave the union. The state security service, the KGB, has observed union activities and has paid visits to trade unionists for “information purposes”. State-run media frequently carry anti-union propaganda.

The state has made trade union registration obligatory. At the same time, the registration requirements are so cumbersome and complicated that in practice it has been virtually impossible for many trade union organizations to register.

The legal conditions for calling a strike are highly restrictive and take at least two months to complete. And the President is empowered to postpone any strike for another three months on the ill-defined grounds of a supposed threat to national security, public order, public health or the rights and freedom of other persons.

Unions’ Cash Crisis
While the temperature hovers around zero, Belarusian union staff are working in unheated offices because the unions can no longer pay the bills.

Not all that many staff are still working, however. Many of them have been laid off. This has wider social implications, because the unions run a whole range of facilities, from clinics and creches to libraries.

To make matters worse, the authorities are now making a careful inventory of trade union property, with a possible view to “nationalizing” it.

Many of the unions, while continuing their legal challenge to the decree, have started collecting dues in cash. The signs so far are that this is working well. Whatever President Lukashenko may think, many Belarusian workers clearly believe that unions are worth paying for.

Soligorsk is a good case in point. The potash mines there are one of the most profitable enterprises in Belarus. Those profits are generated by tough miners who crawl on their hands and knees through narrow galleries deep underground. They have a long trade union tradition, and the company is only too keen to help put a new dues collection system in place. The last thing the management wants is a strike, but the Soligorsk unions have made it clear that industrial action could be one consequence of Lukashenko’s decree.

The miners’ unions are particularly concerned about the way the check-off ban has ridden roughshod over current collective agreements. “If the government can ignore collective agreements on this point today, there’s nothing to stop them ignoring our agreements altogether tomorrow,” the Soligorsk unions say.

Assisting the Belarusian Trade Unions …
The International Trade union movement is closely working with the Belarussian unions to help them in restructuring their own organization and to defend their independence.

Under a four year project launched this February, the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO) will be working with unions in Belarus both to defend labour rights and to boost the unions’ own capacity to promote democracy and socially responsible economic transition.

The project, that is funded by the German government, will be implemented in close cooperation with the new and the traditional Belarusian trade unions. It is designed to strengthen the research, information and training capacity of the Belarussian independent trade union movement. The project will help the trade unions to modernize their structures to improve their information and communication policy and to develop alternative idea to the disastrous social and economic policy of President Lukashenko. A trilingual website www.praca.by is already providing up to date information on the trade union situation in Belarus.

… and increasing international pressure
Belarus has strong cultural ties with Russia. In fact, a Russian-Belarus political union has been mooted from time to time. So Russian trade unions, in particular, view developments in Belarus with great concern. Talks on the situation there have recently been held at the highest level between the Russian unions and the administration of President Putin. The Russian government is understood to have made its concerns known to Lukashenko.

This is just part of the international political pressure now aimed at restoring trade union rights in Belarus. Both Putin and Germany’s Chancellor Gerhard Schröder have recently received a letter asking them to “persuade President Lukashenko to respect workers’ fundamental rights without reservation, in accordance with the ILO core standards ratified by Belarus.”

The letter is co-signed by Ursula Engelen-Kefer and Mikhail Shmakov. Engelen-Kefer is the workers’ spokesperson on the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association. She is also the deputy chair of the German Trade Union Federation (DGB). Shmakov, who chairs the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia, is the vice-chair of the Belarus-Russia Trade Union Council.

The Belarus unions can also count on a helping hand from global labour. Alerted to the cash crisis, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) has set up a special solidarity fund and has asked its affiliated union federations worldwide to contribute.

Even here, there will be problems. Another of Lukashenko’s decrees, issued last year, prohibits international assistance to the trade unions in Belarus. Ways will, however, be found to ensure international solidarity.

The ILO is nevertheless trying to facilitate a productive dialogue and keep the door open for the Belarusian authorities. The Belarus government has already had several offers of ILO technical assistance in bringing its labour laws and regulations into line with international standards.

At the project launch in Minsk this February, an ILO spokesman repeated a “standing invitation” to the co-chairpersons of the Belarussian National Council for Labour and Social Issues to visit the ILO’s headquarters in Geneva. There, they could “discuss possibilities for a meaningful social dialogue in Belarus”.

“It is up to the government to decide whether it wants to make use of this opportunity,” the ILO said. The demand for full respect of ILO Convention 87 will not go away, if the government just tries to ignore it. The continuous violation of workers’ rights might trigger even bigger political and economic problems for Belarus. Belarus already lost its trade preferences with the United States and has no chance to apply for special trade preferences the EU is offering countries that fully apply the ILO core conventions. It even risks loosing the general trade preferences with the EU.

The Belarusian Trade unions hope that the national and international protest will finally convince President Lukashenko to stop his crusade against independent trade unions.

Contact person in ACTRAV: Frank HOFFER