The British MPs’ comments came ahead of a high-level reconstruction conference in Germany, which will be opened by the country’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen this week.
Workers’ rights are seemingly not on the agenda for the conference, which supports “a sustainable, resilient, inclusive, and green economic recovery which enhances strong democratic institutions, rule of law, and anti-corruption measures”.
A previous international conference on Ukraine’s reconstruction was criticised by Ukrainian trade union officials for putting too much focus on investment plans.
That conference, held in Lugano, Switzerland, at the start of summer, ended in a declaration of support for Western-backed short- and long-term recovery plans for the country, signed by 40 states.
The trade union officials complained the document failed to mention “the policies that will affect real people, Ukrainians, workers – the people who are going to restore the country?”
At the time, they called for international reconstruction efforts to guarantee social dialogue principles – where employers and unions, with input from the state, negotiate over work-related issues – as part of the reform and rebuilding programme. This, they said, would turn the tide on the “closing space” in Ukraine for organised labour.
‘Window of opportunity’
Analysts say Ukraine’s ruling Servant of the People party and its government have used the Russian invasion as a “window of opportunity” to push through their long-held labour deregulation agenda. They point out that President Volodymyr Zelenskyi’s administration made several attempts at radical labour reform prior to the war, but those efforts were blocked by trade union protests.
Indeed, a recent draft reconstruction plan released by the Ukrainian government named Ukrainian workers’ “low loyalty to reforms” and the “active position of resistance taken by trade unions” as “key institutional restraints” to planned reforms.
In August, Zelenskyi signed a law that removes all employees of small- and medium-sized businesses from national labour law, encouraging them to strike individual, bespoke agreements with their employers instead.
Last year, a joint project by the International Labor Organization and European Union criticised this legislation for setting up a “parallel and less protective regime” for Ukrainian workers – and putting the idea that employers and employees can negotiate from equal positions of power into law.
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