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How could you not be confused by a call for strike action made this week by … the richest man in Ukraine, Rinat Akhmetov! He has called on workers at the metals plants and mines that he owns in Donetsk to stop work in protest at the so-called “People’s Republic” set up there.
Akhmetov was one of the key backers of the overthrown president Viktor Yanukovich. Since Yanukovich was defeated in February, Akhmetov has constantly been accused of supporting armed separatism in eastern Ukraine – and indeed the proto-fascist leader of the Donetsk separatists, Pavel Gubaryov, claimed the movement was financed by Akhmetov. But now Akhmetov has publicly stated his support for the Kyiv government.
In the second of two pro-Kyiv videos posted on Youtube, Akhmetov on Monday called on his own employees to strike against separatism. This followed the organisation of self-defence units by steelworkers at an Akhmetov-owned plant in Mariupol, the port city in Donetsk region. The units, formed last month with no apparent support from the steelworks management, were last week brought on to the streets with the managers’ active participation (according to this article in the New York Times).
Weird as it may sound to readers in many countries … workers are being mobilised by their bosses. Such alliances are a long and dishonourable post-Soviet tradition.
In the 1990s, miners and other industrial workers were for the first time developing independent unions that had been illegal and impossible to organise in Soviet times. At the same time, local bosses and would-be owners were battling for control of cash flows and assets with “the centre” (i.e. ministries in Moscow or, from 1991 in Ukraine, Kyiv). Both Russia and Ukraine suffered an epidemic of non-payment of wages by bankrupt enterprises. Plant managers would typically urge workers e.g. to block roads or railroads, or even kidnap visiting officials, to put pressure on “the centre”. The workers often needed little persuading.
full: http://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2014/05/22/eastern-ukraine-beyond-the-fragments/
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