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16 October, 1999Finnish journalists on visit to Karelia are hopeful that Russia is not doomed to sustained economic failure.
RUSSIA: A group of Finnish journalists visited the 2,190 square kilometer Sortavala district, in the Republic of Karelia, just over the Finno-Russian border in mid-October. A report on their visit to three enterprises give concrete reasons for cautious optimism.
The Karelia trade union movement is still suffering badly from Russia's economic collapse. With seriously reduced financial resources, it has had to meet another major challenge: Soviet-style trade unionism has little to offer in a market economy. Western-style trade unionism, on the other hand, has been under construction in the last few years. One essential element of the work has been the effort to create a new trade union training system.
Finnish unions have provided an important boost in these efforts. A two-year project, co-financed by Finnish trade unions and the European Union, was completed last summer, and their original goal of training 650 trade union educators was even exceeded. More than a thousand activists from the construction, engineering and machine assembly industries, the commercial and several other sectors participated in the courses.
New members have joined the unions, dozens of new local branches have been established and more than a hundred new collective agreements have been negotiated. Recently, Russian organisations in Karelia began to organise training courses with no external assistance.
The downward spiral has, however, not been stopped. Union membership continues to fall, although the 68 per cent organising rate is still very high by international standards. The growing self-confidence of the movement in Karelia is well illustrated in its latest demand for a US$ 100 monthly wage for workers in larger industrial enterprises.
As the two-year educational programme has ended, SAK -- the Finnish trade union confederation - and its unions are seeking other forms of cooperation with trade unions in Karelia. The positive results have been encouraging. Many organisations and individual members of Finland's other two central trade union organisations, STTK and Akava, are also actively assisting the needy people of the Republic of Karelia.
Read the complete text under associated link.
The Karelia trade union movement is still suffering badly from Russia's economic collapse. With seriously reduced financial resources, it has had to meet another major challenge: Soviet-style trade unionism has little to offer in a market economy. Western-style trade unionism, on the other hand, has been under construction in the last few years. One essential element of the work has been the effort to create a new trade union training system.
Finnish unions have provided an important boost in these efforts. A two-year project, co-financed by Finnish trade unions and the European Union, was completed last summer, and their original goal of training 650 trade union educators was even exceeded. More than a thousand activists from the construction, engineering and machine assembly industries, the commercial and several other sectors participated in the courses.
New members have joined the unions, dozens of new local branches have been established and more than a hundred new collective agreements have been negotiated. Recently, Russian organisations in Karelia began to organise training courses with no external assistance.
The downward spiral has, however, not been stopped. Union membership continues to fall, although the 68 per cent organising rate is still very high by international standards. The growing self-confidence of the movement in Karelia is well illustrated in its latest demand for a US$ 100 monthly wage for workers in larger industrial enterprises.
As the two-year educational programme has ended, SAK -- the Finnish trade union confederation - and its unions are seeking other forms of cooperation with trade unions in Karelia. The positive results have been encouraging. Many organisations and individual members of Finland's other two central trade union organisations, STTK and Akava, are also actively assisting the needy people of the Republic of Karelia.
Read the complete text under associated link.