On the Russian Waterfront: Kaliningrad Dockworkers Leader Beaten, Stabbed

Union members from all over Russia flocked to a picket line outside the entrance to the city of Kaliningrad’s port on June 20. They gathered to support independent union leader Mikhail Chesalin, who was brutally attacked and stabbed outside his office a few weeks earlier.

The attack came two months into an organizing drive that the union was running in the port and few had any doubt that the employer was behind it. Chesalin, leader of the Kaliningrad independent dockworkers union (RPD in Russian), has been a leader in the fight for workers’ rights in the port and throughout the region for over a decade.

SKEWED INVESTIGATION

Port General Director Vladimir Kalinichenko considers Chesalin his personal enemy. After Chesalin defeated Kalinichenko in the regional Duma (Russia’s legislature) election, Kalinichenko refused to permit Chesalin to join all the other Duma deputies at a session conducted on port territory. When asked whether the government was willing to tolerate such a blatant flouting of the law, the Duma Speaker told Chesalin, “I’m not in charge here.”

This has been the government’s general position regarding the lawlessness that rages within the port’s gates. in countless cases, the government has either sided with port management, despite explicit violations of the law, or taken a hands-off approach. Despite thousands of letters to the regional prosecutor and Kaliningrad governor requesting that Chesalin’s case be handled with the gravity of an attack on a public figure, the prosecutor continues to treat the case as a robbery. Chesalin’s beaten-up Duma cell phone went missing after the attack.

UNION BUSTING CAMPAIGN

RPD has a long history fighting in the Kaliningrad port. It conducted a historic strike in 1997, after which port management embarked on an anti-union campaign that included slashing union members’ wages by a factor of 10 and firing most of the port’s union workers.

The repression was so severe that it became a national and international flashpoint, including at the European Court of Human Rights, which accepted this as the first trade union case from Russia that it will review.

Despite the union busting, RPD has held on, small in the port, but active throughout the region, helping other workers create independent unions. The union launched a campaign in Spring 2007 to raise wages in the port and increase membership. Working under the slogan “Where is our money?” the union trained several dozen members to make organizing house calls (a first in Russia).

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Workers were exhausted and fed up with putting in up to 28 11-hour shifts per month so that they could bring home $500 (less than the average industrial wage in the region), despite the port’s record-breaking levels of cargo. Workers were ready for a change, but scared of the consequences.

Their fears were justified. Port management sent security guards to break up the union’s first meeting. Since that meeting, port management has sent spies and photographers to every union event, after which managers make announcements about who was “caught” talking to union organizers.

Several workers have already been fired for talking to union representatives. Others were denied training on new equipment or even parking permits.

The company union, run by a crony of the general director, holds events at the same time as union meetings, paying workers more than half what they make during one shift on the docks to attend. Workers who try to leave the company union are threatened with firings.

Gennady Klyuev, chair of the dockworkers local in Murmansk, is currently struggling against vicious union-busting in his own port and knows these intimidation tactics well. One of those who came to Kaliningrad to support Chesalin, Klyuev said that union organizing in Russia today is vital—not because it is likely to succeed, but because “hope is all that our people have left.”

Klyuev, like Chesalin, has been threatened physically. He said this is the likely fate of anyone who fights for the people’s interests not through words, but through action: “If you are defending the interests of Russian citizens, you will be threatened, attacked, your organization will be destroyed. Employers today know no limits.”