Introduction

Communism produced a class of workers with strong emotional ties to and material interest in maintaining that system, ¹ so economic restructuring in the industrial sectors in communist states is very likely to invite labor resistance. The government would need to employ cautious measures to avoid strong resistance and possible social unrest. While there seems to be a “surprise of labor weakness” in post-communist societies, the reasons for labor quiescence are complex, including weak trade unions, limited worker solidarity, and prolonged economic downturns that produce discouragement and a kind of “learned powerlessness” among workers and their leaders. ² But labor quiescence in some former socialist countries was also related to the modes of retrenchment. During the “shock therapy” of post-communist Poland, for example, the Polish government offered workers early retirement with generous compensation, which helped reduce laid-off workers’ resistance. In 1990, the number of employees in Polish state-owned enterprises (SOEs) fell by 31 percent, with early voluntary retirement accounting for at least 70 percent of the net drop in employment. Voluntary retirement blunted the resistance to reform: “If the initial wave of job losses had been predominantly involuntary, a backlash might well have ensued; but the pattern that was actually observed in 1990 and 1991 posed far fewer risks, allowing much-needed reforms to take root.” ³ In Russia, economic restructuring primarily involved privatization and did not lead to immediate large-scale layoffs. An overwhelming number of firms adopted the option of allowing workers and managers to hold a part or the majority of the firm’s shares. ⁴ Privatization might not work to the advantage of Russian workers, but neither had it driven them to resist. Kramer writes: “Although in some cases privatization has indeed been a stimulus to worker mobilization, it has not in general proved to be such as workers have shown themselves to be too demoralized, divided and fatalistic to believe that they have the power to influence such major decisions.” ⁵