Appeal To all progressive organizations of the world

From the Coordinating Committee of the All-Russian Campaign in Defense of the Labor Code, Northstar Compass, May 2000

Dear Comrades!

The Russian Government and President Putin now plan to hurry through the Russian State Duma a new barbarous anti-worker Labor Code which will leave our working class without legal methods to struggle against arbitrariness of the new private proprietors and state authorities.

The government Draft Labor Code frees the employer from the need to seek the trade union's consent for terminating the worker's employment, or its approval of work schedule and labor norms. This draft code effectively abolishes the 8-hour work day and all legal protection of trade-union activists from the bosses' vengeance, it also legalizes unlimited overtime work without any overtime pay, and also weakens the protection of working mothers with small children. This bourgeois Draft Code throws the working class back to the times of the Czars.

On April 4 we established the Coordinating Committee in Moscow and on May 17 we organized the Day of United Actions with the following demands:

• NO to the Government's proposed Labor Code, short-time contracts, and the arbitrariness of “owners” and management!
• YES to the Control of Workers Collectives in the Enterprises!

In this struggle we count on international support and resistance to this anti-labor legislation. We are asking foreign comrades, labor unions, left and progressive organizations in the world for solidarity in this struggle.

At stake is the last remaining gain of the Great October Socialist Revolution!

This Appeal was signed by 17 leaders of different trade union and defense organizations across Russia.

We're asking all Northstar Compass readers to send messages of support to:

Oleg Shein
Deputy to Russian Duma
Okhotnyi Road 1
Moscow 103265, Russia

NSC and also the Organizing Committee for an International Council have sent letters of support via e-mail to our Soviet comrades.