Ukraine to pass laws wrecking workers’ rights
Zero-hours contracts are set to be legalised and 70 per cent of the workforce exempted from workplace protections.
Alles anzeigenThe Ukrainian parliament has passed two new radical measures on labour liberalisation, prompting fears of Ukrainians losing workplace rights permanently as Russia’s war puts huge pressure on the country’s economy. In two laws passed on Monday and Tuesday, MPs voted to legalise zero-hours contracts and made moves towards removing up to 70 per cent of the country’s workforce from protections guaranteed by national labour law.
The latter measure means the national labour code no longer applies to employees of small and medium enterprises; instead, it is proposed that each worker strikes an individual labour agreement with their employer. It also removes the legal authority of trade unions to veto workplace dismissals. Draft law 5371 had previously been criticised by the International Labor Organization, as well as Ukrainian and European trade unions, on the basis that it could ‘infringe international labour standards’.
Ukraine’s ruling Servant of the People party argued that the ‘extreme over-regulation of employment contradicts the principles of market self-regulation [and] modern personnel management’. Red tape in Ukraine’s human-resources laws, it suggested, ‘creates bureaucratic barriers both for the self-realisation of employees and for raising the competitiveness of employers’.[...]
A leading member of Zelenskyy’s party promised further liberalisation of Ukraine’s labour legislation earlier this month. ‘These are draft laws that business is waiting for, draft laws that will protect the interests of all entrepreneurs. And workers, too, by the way,’ the MP Danylo Hetmantsev wrote.
‘A worker should be able to regulate his relationship with an employer himself. Without the state,’ said Hetmantsev, who is head of the Ukrainian parliament’s finance committee. ‘This is what happens in a state if it’s free, European and market-oriented. Otherwise, the country will be travelling with one leg on an express train to the EU, and with another inside a Soviet-era train going in the other direction.’
The Ukrainian labour lawyer George Sandul previously told openDemocracy that MPs had used Russia’s invasion of the country as a ‘window of opportunity’ in which to try to push through drastic changes to labour legislation. Lomonosova agreed, arguing that deregulation and the stripping back of social guarantees had been long-term policies of the Ukrainian government even before the war and were likely part of an effort to attract foreign investors.[...]
Nur falls jetzt jemand das gleiche blödsinnige Argument bringt, wie diverse neoliberale Schockstrategen liberale Ökonomen, das Land befinde sich schliesslich im Krieg und da müssten eben alle zusammenhalten und ihre Ansprüche zurück stellen, sei erwähnt, dass Selenskyj und seine Vorgänger schon vor dem russischen Angriff, und vor allem nach 2014 verstärkt, auf Privatisierungen und Arbeitsmarkt-"Reformen" setzten, um das Land für den Westen "wettbewerbsfähig" zu machen.
Was jetzt passiert ist eigentlich Naomi Kleins shock doctrine wie aus dem Bilderbuch. Neoliberale Ideologen hatten bereits in Russland in den 90er Jahren nach dem Zerfall der Sowjetunion darauf gesetzt, die tiefe Krise, in die das Land dabei gestürzt wurde zur Durchsetzung ihrer radikalen Vorstellungen einer vollends liberalisierten Marktgesellschaft zu nutzen. Das Ergebnis waren nicht nur die berühmten russischen Oligarchen, sondern auch der kometenhafte Aufstieg genau jenes Ex-KGB-Offiziers, den die selben "liberalen" Freiheitsverteidiger nun als kombinierte Reinkarnation von Stalin und Hitler sehen und gegen den sie sich jetzt von den UkrainerInnen verteidigen lassen.
Herr Nymoen bringt es auf den Punkt: