Barriers to Collective Action: Steelworkers and Mutual Dependence in the Former Soviet Union

Abstract

The author examines the question of why labor in the former Soviet Union has remained so quiet during this tumultous period. He conducts a most similar case study of coal miners, who have struck and organized militant trade unions, and of steelworkers in the same communities, who have not. To explain the lack of strike activity, the concept of mutual dependence is developed, whereby the enterprise is dependent on workers in a labor-short economy and workers in turn have been dependent on the enterprise for the provision of goods and services in short supply. The provision of a high level of such goods and services through the workplace was found to prevent independent worker activity in steel mills and certain coal mines. Implications are drawn for theories of collective action and the study of the former Soviet Union and its economic and political transformation.

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