The difficult birth of a workers' movement THE growing prominence of the question of power in the Soviet economy, as well as the accelerated decline in the general economic situation, have had a direct Impact on the labour movement. Labour conflicts in the first years of perestroika generally centred around Issues of wages and conditions, with demands addressed to the enterprise management and sometimes to the ministry.! Although these remain Important, a new type of conflict has emerged over the past year. Rather than putting forth economic demands and pressuring management to meet them, workers are themselves seeking an active role in the management of their enterprises. The following article is the second part of a long study on the struggle for power in the Soviet economy, the first part of which appeared in IV 200. The third part, on the Soviet self-management movement, follows on page 21. DAVID SEPPO
HESE conflicts, which are more nEsE conflicts, which are more offensive in nature and pose directly the issue of power in the enterprise, have been especially prominent in the crucial machineconstruction industry, which, unlike coalmining, has not seen any coordinated, inter-enterprise strike movement.
At the start of 1990, Moscow's AZLK auto factory, which makes the "Moskvich"
, seemed to even the handful of activists an unlikely place for an "uprising"
Like many of Moscow's factories with large semi-skilled and unskilled labour forces, about two-thirds of the workers here are limitchiki, workers from the provinces with temporary Moscow residence permits that can be revoked upon dismissal from the factory. They are therefore especially vulnerable and generally quiescent. But even the settled Muscovites felt the pressure and corrupting influence of the internal distribution system, which expanded as shortages in the state shops worsened.
True, the year before, something unheard of had occurred at the factory's trade union conference: someone complained about the purchase of machinery from Western
Europe. Some speakers blamed this on management's decision to send the director's son (travel to the West being a coveted privilege) rather than workers and engineers who had firsthand knowledge of the specifications. AZLK's workers also remembered how the previous year the director had ignored the decision of the work-collective (self- management) council and adopted a
120,000-car plan target. He went so far as to dismiss his popular assistant director, who had insisted that the plant's capacity was only 80,000. In fact, only 74,000 cars were made in 1989, but the workers received their bonuses anyway, since the director is well-connected and was able to persuade the ministry to "correct" the plan.
Foolish decision to consult workers
The adoption of the original plan had allowed him to obtain additional funds, some of which went to buy the machinery that was lying about uninstalled. 1989 also saw the workers reject management's proposed schedule of fifteen
"black" (working) Saturdays, when the director, in a nod to the current fashion
(since then abandoned, as we shall see, foolishly decided to consult the workers.
But otherwise, the workers looked on in their usual gloomy silence at management's inability to rationally organize production and provide normal work conditions as well at its deepening corruption (the huge sums involved in the shadow economy and the great demand for the attractive new Moskvich have opened up new vistas in this area. Then came an article in Komsomol' skaya pravda, written on information provided by factory activists, describing the poor management at the enterprise. If in 1985, 17,500 workers produced 175,000 cars, in 1989 16,900 workers made less than half as many. This was followed by a television report that the factory was being fined one and a half million convertible rubles for non-fulfillment of a contract to build a sports car for a West German
4610 firm. The final piece of tinder was the news that the retail price of the Moskvich would be raised 50% to 13,500 rubles, although no substantial improvements had been made. The factory would be allowed to keep 1,000 extra rubles for its needs.
In January 1990, the work-collective council of the assembly shop, led by a group of activist workers (who are also party members), called a shop meeting to discuss the situation. To the surprise of the initiators, workers streamed in from all over the factory and filled up the 800seat hall and adjacent corridors to overflowing. The following demands were put forward: dismissal of the director and election of a new one; reinstatement of the dismissed assistant director; new elections to the enterprise workcollective council, since the present one was subservient to the administration; no price rises (speakers explained that it might permit the factory to raise wages, but if all enterprises made unjustified price rises, wage gains would soon be wiped out); equalization of the rights of the limitchiki with those of permanent
USSR residents; a regular work process, without idle time, "storming" and violation of internal supply schedules; real costaccounting; and wages paid according to labour (large wage differentials exist from shop to shop for the same kind of work). Some speakers demanded that supervisory and technical personnel be cut and the savings be used to raise the salaries of the remainder in accordance with results.
In a letter to Pravda, Sergei Novopol'skii, chairman of the assembly shop's work collective council and head of a brigade of mechanic assemblers, explained the underlying impulse behind the explosion: "The main thing is that we are convinced that perestroika does not need silent workers of the kind the present management would like to see but workers who think, who understand, and who know how to work in a way that is useful for the country. "2 But the director, on his part, attributed it all to the "intrigues of the apparatus" which he accused of abusing the new democracy and glasnost. He agreed to hold a referendum on his administration, which he won. The main results of the meeting were new elections to the work-collective council and a halving of the price rise. Explosions of discontent expected The workers were obviously not prepared for sustained activism. In part, this can be attributed to the influence of the economic crisis and the internal distribution system. However, the latter's arbitrary and corrupting nature, while effective in the short run, is particularly degrading to the workers and eventually adds fuel to the explosions when they finally occur. And most Soviet observers expect these to occur soon. More importantly, perhaps, the autoworkers' demands were addressed to the enterprise management, but may of their problems could be resolved only at higher, essentially political, levels. Any new movement will have to link up with workers in other enterprises if it is to be effective and take on stable, organized forms.
Only a few weeks after the AZLK meet1. See D. Mandel: "Revolutionary reform in Soviet factories: Restructuring relations between Workers and Management", Socialist Register, 1989, London: Merlin Press, 1989, pp. 102-29. On the miners' movement, see T. Friedgut and L. Siegelbaum, "Perestroika from below: The miners' strike and its aftermath", New Left Review, 1990, pp. 5-32; D. Mandel, "Rebirth of the Soviet Labour Movement: The coalminers' strike of July 1989", Politics and Society, vol. 18, Sept. 1990, pp. 381-404. 2. Pravda, February 8, 1990. This account is mainly based on interviews and a recording of the January 3. Za sovetsday malirania (Moscow), February S, 1 7 meeting March 4, 1991 • #201 International Viewpoint
USSR ing, a similar gathering took place several thousand kilometers away at the Sibelektrotyazhmash plant in Novosibirsk which makes large electric generators. Here too workers had never shown much concern for the economic fate of the enterprise. their complaints were traditionally about the cafeteria's food, bad ventilation and heating, the periodic absence of hot water. In short, it was a typical machineconstruction enterprise, except perhaps for the shiny new Toyotas parked in front of the administration building, though these too were becoming a familiar scene in the fifth year of perestroika.
Producing less, with more labour
The initiative for the meeting here too came from a group of activists. A few days before, the head of a brigade of turners, himself a member of the factory's party committee, sounded out the shops and met with an enthusiastic response from the workers. The main issue at the meeting was poor management. The director had been elected a year ago but had not carried out his programme: no new forms of work organization had been introduced. Output was half of what it had been twenty years ago, but the work force was the same size. The assembly brigade stood idle for weeks, while workers in the adjacent shop put in two hour shifts for the same wage.
Copper wire worth thousands of rubles was cut up because there were no reels. technical and production discipline had declined catastrophically. While the director blamed all this on the middle levels of management, which he accused of sabotaging his initiatives, the workers complained that they rarely saw him in the factory and never on the shop floor. While the collective was seething and with the conference already in preparation, he took off to Moscow to attend a branch conference of directors. The chief engineer's assertion that things were not so bad since profits had risen 400% over 1976-88 made no impression of the workers.
But the most insistent accusation against management concerned the cooperatives. These had been created to help the enterprise fulfill the state's directive to increase its production of consumer goods. "Where are these goods?" asked the workers. "We don't see any more [on the market] than before. Who are we fooling? The managers are coddling the cooperatives, and the cooperatives are robbing the enterprise blind. Transformer copper is going to the cooperatives, but who signs it out? We produce no copper waste." "The superintendent of the first department received 1500 rubles from one of the fifteen cooperatives organized at the factory to produce consumer goods...In 18 essence, this is payment for having ruined the shop - let's tell things as they really International Viewpoint #201 • March 4, 1991 are. The shop is now working to meet the needs of the cooperative, not the factory. Forty welders left the shop for the cooperative, forcing other shops to send their people to help it out. One of the assistants to the chief engineer received 2700 rubles for the construction of a trestle table in his spare time. Where does he get it, if he doesn't have a fixed workday? The party organizer has also dirtied his hands in the cooperatives. He has passed all his work to his assistant and himself is nowhere to be seen. People are sick of all this. It angers us to the bottom of our souls. What is going on around us? We have to change our life, we cannot go on living like this. The meeting elected a workers' committee (representing only the blue-collar workers) to take power in the factory and decided to hold elections to the workcollective committee (which represents all employees: workers, office employees, engineering and technical personnel as well as management, which has been doing little more than distributing defitsit [Soviet term for scarce goods].
The factory's newspaper was removed from the control of the administration, the party and trade-union committees and made responsible to the workers' conference. Managerial, engineering and technical personnel were to be cut in half, and a new director elected. (The workers' committee later decided to give him six more months, after which he would report back to the workers, who would take a final decision).
Characterizing as one-sided the enterprise's relations with the ministry, regional and union governments (it paid them 70% of its income, leaving little for the collective's social development), the meeting decided to negotiate a reduction in its payments. The workers' committee was instructed to study, with the aid of economists, the question of gradually leaving the ministry (the workers were aware that they might be worse off without the ministry playing its redistributive role within the branch).
Cooperatives viewed as parasites
The cooperatives, accused of "pillaging the enterprise's resources and fostering the moral decay of the collective", were ordered off the enterprise's territory, and administrative personnel as well as employees in the financial and accounting departments forbidden from working in them. Full reports on their activities and finances were ordered from the cooperative chairpersons.
The meeting also turned its attention to the nefarious effect on the collective of the internal distribution system and decided that henceforth, the sale of scarce consumer goods, food, cars and so on, would take place only after this had been approved by a workers' conference. Finally, on the issue of Toyotas, a report was demanded of the superintendent of intondent of the transport department on the cost of maintaining the enterprise's fleet of cars and vans and on his budget in 1989.
The election of a workers' committee is characteristic of many of these conflicts. As one observer put it: "in the majority of cases the work-collective committees [elected by the entire collective] fail to show any independence vis-à-vis management.
Hostility between blue and white-collar workers
The work collective committees were basically created on orders from above [until the government issued a special instruction, they were often headed by the director]. The workers' committees [representing only the blue-collar workers], on the other hand, are not obligated to anyone at their birth, that is, they are not the result of initiative from above, but of the realization that we are all responsible for changing things and that if we do not, who will?"s The formation of workers committees reflects in part the deepening hostility between workers and "white blouses" in the enterprises — the reduction of administrative and technical personnel is a very popular demand.
But it is also a response to the fact that technical, like administrative personnel, have no right of appeal against dismissals and are therefore more dependent on the director. One of the workers' leaders explained: "The shop engineers are our brothers; they work in the same dirt and face the same difficulties....We aren't against them. They should be with us. Our level of knowledge does not allow us to really spread our wings, especially when it comes to economic questions. But for the time being, we have decided to create a workers' committee with representatives only from the working class.... we have a good lever — the strike. Management has to consider that possibility and take the proletariat into account... But we do include the engineering and technical personnel in the work collective committee."
Another interesting aspect of these conflicts is the initiating role often played by worker party activists. This occurs against the general background of the party's unpopularity among workers, who are leaving it in significant numbers.
At a Vilnius trucking enterprise, whose 4. "Demokratisatsiya na proivodstve: vlast' dela i vlast'...ch'ya?" EKO (Novosibirsk), no. 8, 1990, pp. 85-102. 5. Rabochaya tribuna, June 15, 1990. 6. The view is widespread among workers that "those people" do not work. Another contributing factor is the wage reform that began in 1987 and under which the salaries of technical and administerative personnel have risen significantly faster than aveage wages. V. Pavlov and I. Yurchikova, "Novye usloviya oplaty truda," Sotsialisticheskii trud, no. 8, 1990, p. 89. 7. "Demokratizatsiya na proizvodstve" (op cit) p. 96. 8. Rabochaya tribuna, August 15, 1990.
existence was threatened in the spring of 1990 by Moscow's oil embargo and the republican government's proposed economic reforms, the workers dissolved the work collective committee and elected a workers' committee, assuming full control of the enterprise.
### Workers committee negotiates independently
The committee was instructed to take "all measures to organize the enterprise's complete, normal functioning, which has been undermined of late." Among other things, it independently concluded a contract with the Ministry of Transport of Byelorussia (just across the border from Lithuania) which agreed to supply the enterprise with fuel and parts. "I would never have believed it" commented a member of the administration. "I always thought that the main thing for them was their 19 rubles a day, and to hell with the rest."
At a Voronezh machine-construction factory, the director was misappropriating the factory's equipment and materials for his personal benefit. A small, poorly organized enterprise that was in bad economic shape, it nevertheless maintained seven well-paid assistant directors. Spurred on by the party committee, a bare majority of the work collective committee called a workers' conference. It elected a workers' committee which it mandated to investigate and restore order in the factory. The director was replaced through competitive election and affairs began quickly to improve?
At a Novosibirsk machine construction factory, the workers shut down a cooperative that management had entrusted with the enterprise's supply and transport services. This occurred after a group of workers forced open the assistant manager's safe and found a contract showing him to be an employee of the cooperative which had been selling the factory's raw materials on the side at two or three times the state price. 1°
At the VAZ auto factory, the workers first learnt from an interview with the assistant general director in the enterprise newspaper that, as one worker put it, "our clever managers had already prepared a package of documents for the conversion of VAZ into a concern." In response, the work collective committee declared VAZ and all its production the property of the work collective."
Conflicts over power in the enterprises, that is over workers' self- management, are destined to grow as the economic and political disintegration of the country continues and factory and ministerial administrations, behind the backs of the workers, who typically suspect the worst, transform enterprises into joint stock companies, enter them into "concerns"
transfer departments to cooperatives, establish joint ventures and commercial banks with enterprise resources and funds.
Until recently, however, one could not speak of a self-management movement in the Soviet Union.
There were only isolated conflicts over power and committee activity in the enterprises. The organized labour movement, which began with the miners strike of July 1989, has been characterized by a basically, though by no means exclusively, trade unionist orientation. After the 1989 strike, the miners transformed their strike committees into workers' committees, which united on a regional basis. Their main function was to monitor fulfillment of the accord with the gover-
- -USSR ment, Resolution 608, that ended the strike. The miners have also held two national congresses, in June and October 1990. These resulted in the founding of an independent trade union. Unlike the official union, which embraces all the employees of the Ministry of the Coal Industry, the new union limits its membership tonon-managerial personnel employed directly by the coal mines or the coal-enrichment factories. The Fifth Conference of Workers Committees of the Kuzbass, which (along with the much smaller Pechora basin) had been the most militant and politicized region, in September 1990 also set as its central goal the formation of a "normal" trade union movement.12
For a movement that arose out of nothing after almost 60 years of very effective repression, these are impressive organizational gains. Nevertheless, this movement is today in crisis. It has not really succeeded in spreading outside of the mines and mining regions. The unions of workers' committees that have arisen in other regions consist mainly of small groups of activists, who emerge out of their isolation only when serious conflict arises in their enterprise.
Independent unions lack mass base
None of the organizations from outside the coalmining areas that attended the Congress of Independent Workers Organizations and Movements in May 1990 in Novokuznetsk (which founded the Confederation of Labour has anything resembling a mass base.' In the mining areas themselves, rank-and-file activism has declined, and the ties between the unions of workers' committees and the rank-and-file have declined. 14 Many delegates to the Second Congress of Coalminers in Donetsk at the end of October 1990 were not at all certain that the congress's decision to found a new trade union would meet with an active or enthusiastic response back home in the mines.'5 9. Rabochaya tribuna, June 15, 1990. 10. A. N. Shkulov, "Na potustoronnei traektori", ЕКО, по. 8, 1980 рр. 108-9. 11. Rabochaya tribuna, December 8, 1990. 12. Nasha gazeta (Novokuznetsk), no. 33, October 2, 1990. 13. P. Funder Larsen, "Workers of the USSR unite!" International Viewpoint, 187, June 18, 1990 and B. Ikhlov, "Neklassovyi vrag," Rabochii vestnik (Per'), no. 5, May 1990, pp. 4-7. 14. This was noted, for example, by V. Golikov, chairman of the Kuzbass Union of Workers Committees, in his report to the fifth conference on September 29-30, 1990. See Nasha gazeta, no. 33, October 2, 1990. 15. This is based upon conversations and on the unpublished proceedings. 16. Kazanskii rabochii (Kazan') no. 2, July 1990. 17. People close to the (official) Union of Workers in the Coal Industry claimed that the minister favoured the creation of a new trade union in order to split the workers. While there is probably some truth in this, most of the delegates to the Miners' Congress that further attempts to reform the old union would be 19 founded the new union were of the opinion that any
USSR
This is essentially a crisis of political orientation against the background of the deepening economic crisis. The attempt through strictly trade-unionist activity to protect living standards and labour conditions in a collapsing economy has reached its limits. The miners themselves have recognized that the government lacked the means to carry out certain parts of Resolution 608 and that many of those economic gains realized were soon lost to inflation.
Ministry finances miners' conference
Moreover, in existing Soviet conditions, a trade unionist orientation often leads to solidarity between workers and their administration, often at the expense of the rest of the population that ends up with a bill it can ill afford to pay. For example, the one-day mail carriers strike on June 15, 1990 was organized by the Ministry of Communications itself. 16 And the Second Congress of Miners was financed by the Coal Industry Ministry, which had its representatives on the organizing committee. This surely must raise questions about the interests being pursued by the various bureaucratic clans in supporting these movements. 1
The miners' movement did, of course, put forth important political demands relating the democratization of the state. But the basic question remained unanswered: what to do with this democracy if and when it was won? The most politicized elements (often those most strongly under liberal influence) have tended to advocate a trade-unionist orientation for the labour movement and, to the extent that they put forward a positive economic programme, a market reform borrowed from the liberals. But this is running up against the same reality that the liberals are now being forced to confront.
Representatives of the Kuzbass Union of Workers' Committees, which under the presidency of Vyacheslav Golikov has had the strongest pro-liberal orientation, participated in the work of the ShatalinYavlinskii commission that drew up the 500-Day Plan. This is a programme for the wholesale privatization of the economy and the establishment of a market system in which state regulation plays a subordinate role. 18 The Kuzbass union has been a strong supporter of Boris Yeltsin and the Russian parliament, with whom it concluded a social peace accord in exchange for the parliament's support in creating a "zone of joint entrepreneurship" (free-trade zone) in the Kuzbass.
But Golikov, in his report to the union's fifth conference at the end of September 1990, was forced to recognize the "deformations" (as described in my article in the previous issue of IV that were already occurring in the Kuzbass with the expan sion of the private sector and market relations in the region. He appealed "not to 20 leave these processes to themselves withInternational Viewpoint #201 • March 4, 1991 out the participation of the toilers. While defending market relations in the economy, we do not intend to allow it to be bought by existing structures and their functionaries". Yet he offered no practical proposals for preventing this.
Similarly, the conference's "Appeal to the Toilers of the Kuzbass" observed that "The programme of transition to market relations and, in the Kuzbass, also the creation of a zone of joint entrepreneurship, are on the whole seen positively by the toilers of the region. But at the same time, the shift of the enterprises to costaccounting and self-financing is already causing job cuts and the closure of unprofitable factories. The transition to market relations will intensify this process by many times." But rather than question the wisdom of this reform, the document merely calls for the creation of "genuine trade unions" to defend the workers.'
Kuzbass miners may benefit from market
The liberal orientation of the Kuzbass leaders is to a large extent premised upon their understanding that the region is well-situated to benefit from the market.
The cost of extracting coal in the Kuzbass is relatively low, since the industry here is comparatively new and the coal close to the surface, often allowing openpit mining. Export contracts have already been signed with Japan. (Some economists, however, argue that Kuzbass optimism will be short-lived. The region is
6000 kilometres from a port, and the exports are being subsidized by cheap
Soviet freight rates. If these rates were raised to the same world levels at which the coal is being sold, there would be no foreign contracts. How long will the railroad agree to subsidize the foreigncurrency earnings of the Kuzbass coal industry?).
The future, however, does not look too rosy for the Donbass coalminers. The mines are old, deep — many are virtually mined out - and their production costs are high. The transition to the market here threatens the region with mass unemployment and the extinction of entire towns and villages.
It is not surprising, then, that outside of the Kuzbass and the Pechora basin (which has export contracts with Sweden 18. A summary of this programme appeared in Komsomol'skaya pravda, September 29, 1990. For an analysis of this programme and a comparison with the USSR govemment's "Basic orientations for the stabilization of the economy and the transition to a market economy" see A. Kolganov, "Doloi Nomenklaturyi kapitalizm!", Dialog, no. 17, November 1990, pp. 418. 19. Nasha gazeta, no. 33, October 2, 1990. 20. The editors of the popular weekly Argumenty i fakry rejected, without any explanation, an article by one of their writers about these telegrams. This perhaps has something to do with the fact that five members of the editorial committee are deputies in the Russian parliament, which adopted the 500-Day Plan through Arctic ports) the miners movement has been rather less enthusiastic about the market. As the inevitable consequences of a transition to the market, as envisaged by the liberal reformers, become clearer, their lack of enthusiasm is turning into alarm. After the publication of the 500-Day Plan, which calls for an end to subsidies and the eventual freeing of prices, dozens of mining associations and enterprises sent angry telegrams to the goverment.20
A delegation of miners from the Yakutogol' Association came to Moscow to protest against the intended dismantling of the industry's central administration and the ending of subsidies. "Natural and geological conditions vary from mine to mine," they explained. "Therefore they cannot all be equally profitable. In our association the average cost of coal is from one to eighteen rubles, but in Donbass it is 40 to 120 rubles. Without the centralized redistribution of funds, without subsidies, Donbass will not survive.... Without centralized management, all sorts of misfortunes and shocks await the branch. "21
Miners withdraw support for free market plan
Taking note of these concerns, the organizing committee of the Second Congress of miners decided against endorsing the plan. One of its members, a miner from Karaganda, explained: "There are disputes in the collectives and in the organiz ing committee about the transition to the market]. The interesting thing is that we ourselves participated in the creation of one of the programmes — that of Shatalin. But we wavered. Why? First of all because the hardest blow will be struck against the extractive industries, and we wanted to first see a separate programme of transition to the market in our branch.
"Of course, a part of the people understand that it will be necessary to adopt certain sacrifices, but there are also many who say: why do I need the market if my interests are violated, if I lose benefits and job seniority? ...We are also worried by the fact that the realization of the Shatalin programme calls for a strong presidential power. Yet just yesterday, we proclaimed the democratization of society and selfmanagement."22
The organizing committee demanded with only one opposing vote, even though few of the deputies had seen more than a brief summary of it. 21. Rabochaya tribuna, September 25, 1990. 22. Komsomol' skaya pravda, October 4, 1990. 23. Rabochaya tribuna, October 21, 1990. 24. Personal communication. The Confederation of Labour was founded by the Congress of Independent Workers' Organizations and Movements in Novokuznetsk in May 1990. 25. From the unpublished protocols and personal conversations. At one point, Golikov tried to reassure the Donbass miners, saying that Kuzbass had helped the British miners during their strike: why think they would not help their Donbass brethren?
the maintenance, at least for the transition al period, of the industry's central admin istration and subsidies.2 Even the Counci of Representatives of the Confederation o Labour, which was subject to strong liber al influence at its founding, also baulked at endorsing the 500-Day Plan at its September 1990 meeting in Donetsk. 24
The differences in orientation among the mining regions manifested themselves from the very start of the Second Congress of Miners at the end of October 1990 in the debate over the agenda. There were three main items: a report on how the decisions of the first congress had been carried out, the transition to the market in the coal industry, including a report by the Minister, and the establishment of an independent trade union. Trade unions little use in face of closure threat
Delegates from the Donbass insisted on allotting an unlimited amount of time to the second question. They felt their region was at stake and that trade unions would be little use if the mines were closed. Delegates from the Kuzbass, on the other hand, insisted on unlimited time for the third point, since, they argued, whatever system the workers lived under, they would need strong trade unions to defend them. 25
Though the vast majority of delegates were in favour of a new independent trade union (a significant minority wanted to democratize the old one), a split over these differences in orientation was narrowly averted only at the very end of the congress, when the new trade union was established. But the delegates of the congress remained extremely dissatisfied with the report on the transition to the market, even though the minister had assured them there would be no layoffs in 1991 ("If even one miner is dismissed," he declared, "you won't have to ask me, I will resign myself").
The discussion made it amply clear that although many miners fear the market, they certainly do not want to retain the old system.
But the minister offered no new vision, only the need to ask the government for additional subsidies. The delegates responded with the decision to create their own commission of experts to develop a plan for the industry.
This decision was implicit recognition of the limits of the strictly trade unionist approach that some of the Kuzbass delegates, like Gorlikov, were advocating. These delegates argued that the congress's basic task was to create a trade union whose principal function would be to obtain the highest possible price for the labour power the workers were selling to the "employers" (rabotodateli). But most of the delegates obviously felt that the new union could not leave the tasks of managing and restructuring their industry outside its purview. *
USSR
The emergence of a self-management movement ALTHOUGH self-management has not played a prominent role in the miners' movement, even those leaders closest to the liberals would no doubt say that they support the idea. One often has the impression that their alliance with the liberals is in no small part based on a misconception (fed by liberal rhetoric about "people's enterprises" and "returning property to the people" that the market proposed by the "democrats" is a necessary condition for real self-management.