Table of Contents
Introduction
PART ONE:
BACKGROUND and GENERAL CONTEXTS in UKRAINE
Russia
The Organization of Russian Teachers dates back to 1905 when the Constituent Congress of the All-Russia Teachers' and Educational Workers Union was convened and attended by 147 delegates from 81 local groups of teachers. In 1917 the organization assumed the name "All-Russia Teachers' Union" but was soon after subsumed within the Union of Internationalist Teachers and became part of the larger Soviet trade union movement. In 1990, with the disintegration of the USSR, the Education and Science Employees' Union of Russia was formed as an independent trade union. 91 % of the workers in the education sector in Russia are members of this union. Since 1995, the E&SEUR has been (like the CTF) a member organization of Education International --which unites 258 teachers' unions from 140 countries. Yet the actual contracts between the Russian union and Western unions is minimal. As a result, teachers in Russia feel isolated and in need of solidarity. This is expecially true during the last few years, during Russia economic crisis. Most school teachers work with much of their salaries being owed to them rather than being paid. Only in Moscow do teachers receive regular incomes. As the situation worsens, union locals collect fewer and fewer dues, and so are weaker and less able to fight for teachers. The entire educational system is resting on the good will of teachers to continue in their jobs without fair compensation.
Where does the responsibility for the crisis in education lie? To begin, laws in Russia give the responsibility for secondary education, primary education, and preschool education to municipal authorities. These local authorities have often misused the small incomes from their local tax-base. This is due to both corruption and incompetence as business are desparate to avoid paying taxes. In dire emergencies, the federal government steps in with financial assistance, but this is gettling less each month and it too is often misused. While official statistics maintain that regions are receiving 60 % of their budgets, the reality is that few regions (outside of Moscow) have enough to pay their teachers at all --not to mention maintain their school infrastructure. There is no new school construction, neglect of existing school buildings, no purchases of textbooks, and no new teaching supplies for classroom use in most Russian schools. Most schools can not pay their public utilities. Many schools have been cut off from electricity and heat. Schools carry on due to the efforts and the dedication of the teachers and the contributions of parents.
The salaries that the teachers of Russia are supposed to be paid are extremely low (typically around 400 roubles before tax) but after the financial collapse in August 1998 the situation has become critical because even these low salaries have not been paid. Banks froze accounts and teachers lost their life savings. Current salary levels are supposedly at about $ Can. 27.oo per month --but these are seldom actually paid. This is significantly below the subsistence level. Sometimes teachers supplement their income by tutoring, but few students have money either because government scholarships and grants have not been honoured, parents have little money, teen unemployment levels are high, and the crisis is wide-spread affecting all sectors of the economy. In thirteen regions in Russia teachers' salaries are in arrears since their last paycheque --which was summer 1997. In other regions it has been three years since teachers have been paid regularly, and most of their salaries during this period are owed to them. Only in Moscow and St. Petersburg is the tax-base sufficient to fund education. The total sum of non-paid wages to teachers in Russia is well over 10 billion roubles. To this figure should be added the unpaid employers' contributions to pension, medical, and insurance funds.
Since September 1998 there have been many strikes, some of which have involved over 300,000 teachers being on picket lines at a time. In addition there have been many wildcat stoppages of work in schools throughout Russia. There have been incidents where teachers have blocked roads, such as in Volgograd. In several cities, such as Bryansk and Polyevskoy, teachers have gone on hunger strikes --and at least one teacher (Alexander Motorin) died of a heart attack while on a hunger strike. But these incidents have failed to turn the situation around and teachers have always gone back to work without any resumption in their salary. On every recent UN "World Teachers' Day" (5 October) there have been widespread job actions. Educational workers have organized picket lines in front of the offices of local authorities. Last 5 October there was a remarkable show of solidarity as 17 million workers held a one-day strike in support of the teachers. In Moscow there was a demonstration by 500,000 people. One of the speakers that day, Nikolai Lukashkin (a Moscow teacher), said that: "Education was always a priority here; now it is not. It is in danger of being ruined." Toronto's Globe and Mail reported that "Russia's educational system, once the pride of the country, is sliding into an abyss of poverty and decay." (source: The Globe and Mail, 23 Nov. 1998, page A18). A recent report to the UN Children's Fund stated that Russian schools are "running on air".
Deepening divisions in Russian society bring with them the danger of a polarized two-tear educational system with fee-paying Moscow private schools at one end and impoverished rural public schools at the other. Inequalities between families is rising dramatically. Low-income students are dropping out of school, the affluent are turning to private schools, and the elite have sent their children to foreign schools in Western Europe. Russia allocates under 4 % of its GDP to education, less than the 6 % that most countries budget for --but worse, much of this money does not find its way to the public schools. As it goes from Moscow through severl layers of government, it is ciphoned off for more urgent needs and little reaches the local level of schools. Since 1991, more than 30,000 public schools in Russia have been closed and a large percentage of the monies allocated for education have been used for purposes other than education. Of the schools that now remain open, almost all are now charging some sort of user fees.
Meanwhile, non-unionized private schools are growing rapidly. The E&SEUR is therefore loosing members each year, loosing dues, and suffering a weakened negotiating position as a result. It is currently in negotiation with the Russian government and the Ministry of Education. But this does not look hopeful as the government itself is in a dire financial situation. In fact, the response of the government has been that additional cuts would have to be made to the budget for public education in the future. The planned "reforms" are to simply get out of the education sector and allow private schools to teach Russia's children. Each student would receive an allotment (vouture system) which would open the door to market competition between schools. This coincides with similar developments in other countries, most notably what Bush did as his first act as President --only here it is called "parental choice". National standard tests are also to be introduced. This plan was published in December 1997 by education minister Alexandr Tikhonov, who was quoted as saying: "education has to get into tune with the market economy" (source: The Teacher, publication of the National Union of Teachers -United Kingdom, December, 1998, page 21). Tikhonov confirmed that a further 25 % cut in education funding was essential.
While the funding cuts have occured, the other aspects of the educational "reform" package have not yet been implemented. They have been put on hold largely because teachers responded by shutting down the entire educational system for two days to protest. In April, 1998, the response turned violent in Yekaterinburg, when students demonstrated against the government proposals. Teachers and professors at their congress in June, 1998, gave then prime minister Sergei Kirienko a stern warning that they would not accept the changes. By September, 1998, the new prime minister Yevgeny Primakov had still not implemented the changes, and promised to pay teachers. Putin has also continued with more promises to pay teachers, but even today, in most of Russia, little has changed since the crisis began. Most salaries are still not paid and the government is still intending to implement its "reforms". The battle over these reforms is not over --it has simply been postponed due to the urgency of the financial crisis.
Teachers are especially concerned about the possibility that "reforms" will be used as a pretext for further spending cuts and privatization. Nikolai Kolebashkin (International Secretary of the E&SEUR) says that "Tikhonov's proposals are directed not at improving the quality of education, or the working conditions of teachers, but only at saving money and at paving the way for education to be privatized." It seems that our situation here in Ontario is different only in matters of degree --the same trends are arguments are happening.
On 26 January 1999, more than 380,000 Russian teachers from over 10,000 schools stayed away from work over the issue of unpaid wages. Education minister Vladimir Filippov further postponed the promised date when wage arrears would be paid. The response of many teachers is to accept that they will never be paid and negotiate some alternative payment. In some local regions this has meant that teachers are being paid in vodka. These teachers then stand on the street to try and sell this vodka. Their earnings from this "extra work" is a fraction of what they are owed. Monies from the sale of products which are given to teachers in lieu of wages is refered to as "additional earnings". Education International's response to the crisis was a resolution, adopted at their July 1998 World Congress, that "when the non-payment of salaries becomes a permanent practice, this is not only a violation of national legislation but also of international standards and in particular of International Labour Organization (ILO) convention number 95 on the protection of salaries, which the Russian Federation has ratified". EI "totally supports the well-founded demands of the E&SEUR and its determined commitment to defending the interests of its members and of education in general." In its resolutions, the EI World Congress also "expresses it admiration for its Russian colleagues who, in these extreme conditions, continue to fulfil their professional obligations by maintaining a high level of teaching in order to provide an education to the future generations of the country" (source: Education International Magazine, September, 1998. Vol. 4. No. 3, page 29).
The E&SEUR has taken the Russian government to the ILO court on the issue of non-payment of salaries. The union's response to this situation also includes the following goals:
1. making education a priority in the budget policy laws;
2. indexing of educational workers' salaries and benefits by law;
and 3. raising the prestige of teachers in society by eliminating the need for their source of income being "additional earnings".
Having said all of this about Russia, it is also true that yet again this past year, Russia imported more luxury cars than any other nation. When I asked Nikolai Kolobashkin about this strange juxtaposition of priorities, we bagan to talk about the large amount of money that was spent on New Year's celebration fireworks. He said that payment in vodka, large expenditures on public displays, and luxury items is a tradition in Russia. In Russia, some traditions are stronger and more resilient than others.
Ukraine
Teachers in Ukraine are even worse off than teachers in Russia --as is the economy generally. There too, there have been many full-blown strikes, --some of which have led to run-ins with riot police. In some cities, recently, roads have been blocked and riot police dispersed the striking teachers. The Ukraine Teacher Union does not belong to Education International, but rather a smaller organization called the World Confederation of Teachers. Most of the points made above (for Russia) are true for Ukraine, but the salaries are even lower and being paid less often. Last year negotiations with teachers led to a decree that average teachers' salaries must be at least as high as the average of industrial workers' salaries. Since then, however, this law has been consistantly ignored as the average teachers' salary as of January 2001 (120 hrivna or about $ Can. 25.oo per month) is significantly lower than the average industrial workers' salary (about $ Can. 35.oo per month). And even this low salary is often not paid. I participated in a demonstration in Kiev in December 2000 against this discrepancy but it led to little response from the government.
Poland
The situation in Poland is quite different from that in Russia and Ukraine. Not only much better due to more funding, but teachers' unions are stronger and members more satisfied with their situation.
PART FOUR: The ROLE of UNIONS
4.1 Unions in the Soviet System
4.2 The Role of Unions in the Transition
4.3 The Role of Unions: the Potential and the Reality
4.4
4.5
4.6 Conclusions Relevant to the Issue of Advancing the Teaching Profession
PART FIVE: WHAT IS TO BE DONE
5.1 General Recomendations
5.2
5.3
5.4
5.5
5.6 Summary of Recommendations
Conclusions