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In Ukraine, Union Movement Meets Many Challenges Head-On |
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Todd Anderson, AFL-CIO Midwest regional director, is taking part in an AFL-CIO delegation to Ukraine, where members of the group are meeting with their state federation/central labor council counterparts. Anderson will send several dispatches during the trip.
Greetings from our delegation to Ukraine, where we are traveling as part of an AFL-CIO State and Local Labor Council Leadership Development Institute initiative in collaboration with the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center.
Groups like ours have taken part in trips to 10 countries over the past several years, holding roundtable discussions and sharing movement-building strategies.
Our trip thus far has been a fast immersion into the culture and history of the trade union movement of Ukraine during our first 24 hours in Kiev. Upon arrival Saturday, we were joined at dinner by Mikhail Volynets, president of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine (CFTUU), who also is president of the Mine Workers and a member of the Ukraine Parliament.
The first lesson in understanding the plight of workers and their families in Ukraine is that the CFTUU is a minority union dwarfed by the vestige union of the former Soviet Union. In the past few years, Ukraine was stricken by political repression, economic violence and social isolation.
Authoritarian political leadership linked to unregulated economic fiefdoms led to extreme abuses of power, rising economic paralysis, ubiquitous corruption and repression of free trade unions. The CFTUU was subject to harassment, intimidation, and violent attacks against its members, employees, and leadership.
On Sunday, Brother Volynets hosted our delegation in his small office. He proudly showed us the George Meany/Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award he received from the AFL-CIO in 2005. Two leaders of the Railway Workers and Nadia Leleka, president of the teachers union and an organizer extraordinaire, also joined us. Later that evening, we met over dinner with the president of the Kiev metro workers union.
Brother Volynets has paid a heavy price for his leadership in the union movement. In October and again in December of 2002, he was badly beaten by security forces. The first beating took place during a peaceful protest in front of the Ukrainian presidential administration offices, and the second in a courtroom while he was observing a trial. Doctors refused to treat and certify his injuries out of fear of government repression. No one was ever charged with either of the beatings.
The work of the Solidarity Center up to this point in the Ukraine is very apparent in our discussion with the CFTUU of Ukraine. For instance, the Solidarity Center helps support CFTUU Women’s Network, identifying women leaders and developing networks with elected officials at all levels of government.
The Solidarity Center also supports the CFTUU’s biweekly publication, Aspekt, distributed free to more than 17,000 workers, and assists in educational trainings, including short seminars on the basic tenets of democratic trade union activism throughout the country.
The commonality of Leleka ’s experience as an organizer with our delegation broke through distance, culture and language. The challenges explained by Volynets could have just as easily been a description of any U.S. union’s struggles.
Our delegation includes Sarah Rogers, executive vice president of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO; Cheryl Schroeder, executive director of the West Central Florida Federation of Labor; and Theo Harris, president of the Palm Beach County Classroom Teachers Association, AFT.
Our next dispatch will be from Donetsk, the eastern part of Ukraine, which is heavily influenced by Russia, both culturally and politically. Independent unions are under a lot of pressure in that area from employers and local government officials who often are connected with underground criminal forces.
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