Estonian unions

By STIG JUTTERSTRÖM Ten years ago, Victor Semindeikin was working in what was described as paradise. Today, this workplace is one of the most icy-cold and dirty places on earth. Dvigatel, in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, manufactured submarines, electric stations and other war equipment for the Soviet national defence. The factory was warm and snug, there were flower pots along the walls, and welders and other skilled workers with heavy jobs were given an extra half a litre of milk every day. At the time of my visit at the end of January, the temperature in the plant was zero degrees, and Victor Semindeikin had a small home-made electric heater on the floor which gave off very little warmth. He was wearing a yellow breathing mask over his mouth and at least six layers of clothing on the hefty upper half of his body - two shirts, two sweaters, a coat and a jacket. Possibly he was wearing more underclothes which were not visible under the shirts. There were no longer any flowers along the walls, but one worker had a big photo of the famous Russian author Alexander Pushkin in front of him. Electricity is too expensive to enable the owner of the factory to heat the huge hall which is 30 meters high, and it is no longer possible even to think about providing extra milk for the workers. However, a 200-gram bar of soap is still distributed to them every month. THE INDUSTRY WAS PRIVATISED Ten years ago, this state-owned company employed 6,000 workers, but because Estonia's entire industry output depended on orders from the Soviet Union, as well as on their supply of energy and raw materials, when the Russian economy collapsed in 1991, so did the Estonian metal industry. What was left of the industry was privatised, and in 1994, three years after Estonian independence was declared, Dvigatel itself was privatised and divided into ten smaller companies. Today, the company bearing the same name has only 300 employees. Victor Semindeikin earns 2,500 Estonian kroon per month ($180). Of this total, he pays 500 kroon tax and 1,200 kroon rent, and one per cent of his wage goes to pay the trade union fee. "The workers cannot afford to live and eat as they did in the past," says Meer Jakobson, the representative of the metalworkers' local trade union, who is sitting behind a large desk with two telephones on it - one red and one green. Sometimes the workers do not get paid for several months. He pointed out press clippings on the wall and copies of letters that he has had to send to management every week to complain about laws or contracts being broken. CONTROLLED BY THE COMMUNIST PARTY Since the changeover, the role of the trade unions has changed drastically. During the Soviet regime, almost everyone was a member of the union, which was wealthy, communist-controlled and had a well-defined function. The union played a positive role: it distributed new cars and flats to its members and helped them with economic and social problems. All the workers received their wages, even those who, during working hours, went to the cinema or to the shops when there were still goods on the shelves. Critics say that the unions were the right hand of the management, while others feel that they acted rather like a personnel department. Today, 180 of the 300 workers employed at Dvigatel are members of the local trade union, although Meer Jakobson explained that they cannot be offered the same advantages as they had in the past. In addition, the unions have a bad reputation in Estonia as they are associated with communism and dictatorship. "During the Soviet regime, this was my best friend," says Meer Jakobson. With a smile, he took a black Lenin statue from the top of the safe and stroked its head. "Everything went like clockwork; the world was small and people did not need to think for themselves, whereas now the world has become much bigger and everything is more insecure." When I asked whether anything had improved during the last ten years, Jakobson heaved a deep sigh and was silent for a long time. "No, not in the area of work, which is the most important thing for the people." He heaved another deep sigh when I asked about the future. "As a factory, we have no future, but looking at Estonia as a whole, I believe that it will get better." WARNINGS FROM THE EMPLOYERS Only one employee at Dvigatel is Estonian. The others are drawn from 18 different nationalities, most of them of Russian origin. Meer Jakobson's mother is Latvian and his father Russian, and he himself is Russian-speaking. Previously, Dvigatel's local union had been an affiliate of the Russian-speaking metalworkers' union, EMTAL, with 3,300 members, but in 1998, the local union joined the Estonian-speaking union, EMTA, which was founded in 1991 and has 1,800 members. During the 90s, both metalworkers' unions shrank in size. Before 1991, EMTAL was a huge union with 85,000 members, but when the Russian market disappeared, a large part of the Estonian metal industry went too. In addition, the old unions were linked with the Communist Party. Some of the new private employers have also warned their employees against being involved with the trade union movement. As a result, only 15 per cent of employees in Estonia are trade union organised. Among the Russian-speaking minority - a little less than one-third of the 1.4 million inhabitants - the rate of membership is 30 per cent, while it is about 10 per cent among the Estonian workers. "The difference between the two unions is very great," says Maaja Tint, a member of the board of EMTA. "In the old union, nothing happened. Now, life has begun again." ESTONIA'S BIGGEST EXPORTER Maie Liiva was working for the safety-belt producer, Norma, until summer 1999, when she was hired as a foreman at the fast-growing and successful company, Elcoteq. This is a Finnish-owned supplier to world-famous Nordic mobile phone companies. Maie Liiva says that she had received a good trade union training at Norma, where the union organises 85 per cent of the just under 900 employees and is the Estonian EMTA's biggest local union, but she did not want to join the Russian-speaking union at Elcoteq. "I did not like the style," she says. Therefore, she immediately formed a new union, of which, to begin with, she was the only member. Now it has 78 members, while the Russian-speaking union has 207. Elcoteq is Estonia's biggest exporter. At present, the 8-year-old company has 2,756 employees with an average age of 32 years, and one-third of the workforce is under 25, most of them women. The factory is light and pleasant. The young women are well made-up, and they walk briskly as they stream in to check in for the afternoon shift. The personnel manager, Kylli Kanter, told me that the wages vary, but the average is 4,200 kroon ($300) per month. The company has no collective agreement and in her opinion there is no need for even one local trade union, and definitely not two! "I've nothing against a collective agreement if our employees want it, but there will be no agreement as long as there are two unions." LIKE ALPINE CLIMBERS Both unions maintain that they are working towards the same goals and that they will merge at some time in the future. At top union level there have been concrete discussions concerning a merger. EMTA is more positive about this, whereas the bigger union, EMTAL, points out that the Russian minority has problems over and above those of the rest of the population. They do not want to claim that they are victims of discrimination, but they do say that it is more difficult for an unemployed foreigner to get a job than for an Estonian citizen. "The trade unions have a new role," says the president of EMTAL, Ljubov Serova, "and the relations between the employers and the unions have changed." Galina Volkova, a member of the union's board, explains: "Previously, the trade union had a lot of money and was respected. Nowadays, people wonder what we can offer them when we are so poor. They keep the same attitude as they had during the Soviet regime and do not want to take an active part, they just sit back and wait." Of the trade union dues, which are one per cent of the wages, 30 per cent goes to the central union. In 1999, EMTAL received only 45 per cent of the membership dues, as many workers have such low wages that they cannot afford to pay them. Four companies pay an average wage of 1,500 kroon ($106) per month. From the year 2000, the minimum legal wage is 1,400 kroon ($100) per month. Leo Lüllemets, shop steward at Norma and vice-president of EMTA, said: "During the Soviet regime, the trade unions had an established role. We asked for whatever we needed and everything was supplied. Now we are obliged to be more dynamic, but it is not easy to make this change and to learn how to act in a market economy. We have been forced to find our own way." Lüllemets said that Estonian society is changing rapidly, so one needs to be in good shape every day to keep up. The president of the same union, Endel Soon, compares the trade union activists with alpine climbers. "We had reached the halfway mark, but then we fell down. Now we have been forced to start again from the bottom." "I FELT THAT WE WERE NEEDED" The small city of Keila, with 15,000 inhabitants, is situated 26 kms west of the capital, Tallinn. Ly Ristikivi, who is the representative of the local trade union at Harju Elekter, really started from the bottom. She has been working there for 20 years but was not at all active in the trade union during the Soviet regime, when the company had 2,000 employees. As a result of privatisation, eight smaller companies were formed, among them Harju Elekter with 400 employees. At a meeting in Spring 1993, most of them felt that a trade union was not necessary. Some of them were frightened of the new employer. Each of them was given an individual contract. If it didn't suit them, they just had to leave. "I was the only one who was of the opinion that a trade union was more necessary than ever," said Ly. "We didn't know our legal rights and our employer was able to commit a lot of breaches of law. I considered that the union must fulfil other tasks than those it had had in the old days, and when I said this at the meeting, it influenced many people." Ly succeeded in getting her fellow workers on her side, and they formed the core of a new local trade union. She studied labour legislation and other issues. "It was difficult but I felt even more sure that we were needed." In 1994, she came into conflict with management concerning a worker who was dismissed illegally. "Why are you making difficulties, fat little auntie?" asked the manager. "You should be taking care of your five children instead." I replied that "I make my own decisions." Today, the manager appreciates and respects Ly Ristikivi's achievements. The company has grown to 600 employees, of whom 172 are trade union members. Ly did not even know of the existence of the central metalworkers' unions when she founded the local union, but in 1997 it joined EMTA. She works half-time on trade union issues and half-time assembling cables for the car industry. In her leisure hours, she is active in Estonian civil defence and has a Kalashnikov gun locked up in a cupboard at home, but she spends a great deal of her free time working for the trade union. She still reads legal texts, writes information material, trains union activists and arranges midsummer parties. Some of the union activists attend courses arranged by the central union. Both EMTA and EMTAL cooperate with Nordic trade unions, and from the beginning of Estonian independence, the Finnish Metalworkers' Union has been providing training for the two unions. The most important areas have been organising, union studies and information. The Estonian trade union movement has had to start from the very beginning. It has become less powerful as many industries have disappeared and union membership has decreased. Less than 10 years ago the country became an independent republic. It has been difficult to recruit trade union leaders in the many new small enterprises which have been created. The fear of losing one's job because of taking part in trade union activities is very real. Some of the present leaders have carried over from the Soviet regime, when it was not necessary to think or to take independent decisions since the instructions came from Moscow. Suddenly, they have had to stand on their own feet, and for the first 10 years they have been stumbling. NEW LABOUR MARKET LAWS "Ten years is a short period," says Leo Lüllemets at Norma. "There were also difficulties in Western Europe 10 years after the Second World War. Although our living standard is still at a low level, we shall gradually find our own way. Our self-confidence and our self-awareness vis-à-vis the employers and the law-makers must grow. Every day we feel more optimistic and more secure." There is no national collective agreement between the employers and the unions within the metal industry and, therefore, the labour market laws are important. But even those have rapidly become obsolete, and the Ministry of Justice is revising these laws with the help of two Dutch experts. The trade unions fear that the new laws will be too general to provide the employees with real security, and they are hoping for more detailed laws, as the trade unions are small and the workers' position is weak. Within the metal sector, agreements are made at company level, but not all employers are willing to sign these agreements. However, some of them are exemplary and positive towards trade union activities in the workplace as, in their opinion, it is better to negotiate with a trade union representative than with each single employee separately. Unfortunately, other employers treat the workers badly, as is the case at Dvigatel. It is a long road back to paradise.