By Vestnik Kavkaza
After last-year mass demonstrations of the opposition which pointed at mismatch of election procedures and peoples’ hopes, the Russian authorities initiated simplification of registration of parties. The new law requires decreasing the minimal number of a party’s members in 80 times (from 40 thousand to 500). By the end of the year more than 200 organizational committees of parties sent requests on their registration to the Ministry of Justice. Recently the party Labor Union headed by Alexander Shershukov, secretary of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia, has been registered.
Of course unions do not play such a big role in Russia as in Europe, but now defenders of the working people will have more opportunities for fighting against capitalistic exploitation.
According to David Krishtahl, deputy chairman of the "Labor Union", the creation of decent working conditions for the well-being of our employees in Russia is the party’s goal. “Society has now developed, unfortunately, an inequitable distribution of income, and the enormous income gap between the richest and poorest today does not hold water. The main thing is to establish in Russia the welfare of the working man. It is not our purpose to politically protect union members, I just want to anticipate your questions. We do not only protect union members. We protect working people. We do not intend to defend the poor, we are not going to protect only those who receive wages at a subsistence level, with which we also do not agree, and the cost of living, which includes compensation payments and various charges, is unacceptable, and this contradicts our legislation, although it is used. We're going to protect working people - those who make good money, those who receive a normal salary, but their foreign colleagues receive more. Why is this happening? We have every reason to fight - to ensure that people receive decent salaries for their work. Our aim is quite solvable: the ten poorest people in a company and the ten richest people in a company should not have an income gap greater than ten times. This was not invented by us. This is normal international practice. This is the practice of civilized nations.”
Alexander Shershukov, Chairman of the party "Labor Union”, says: “In May we created an organizing committee for the creation of the "Labor Union"; on July 6 there was the founding congress, which was attended by 136 delegates from 57 regions of Russia, and at this Congress, respectively, the All-Russian Party "Labour Union" was established, governing bodies were elected - the political council and Auditing Commission, the chairman of the party was also elected and, according to the legislation of the Party, there was a secret vote - 132 votes "for", 4 votes "against." After that the registration process began. In all these regions there was a constituent assembly, we handed over our documents to the Ministry of Justice, and then a long and painful process began. I generally just have a long association and have to do with the world of politics, the world of labor and therefore I can somehow estimate the degree of fame or obscurity of a character, an organization, etc. So, among the 53 registered political parties, I think people sitting in the hall now would hardly be likely to find famous people, organizations, there are only some unclear entities. It is clear that a certain bloc are the so-called spoilers, but this does not change the situation. And here, it would seem, there is a party, which starts to be created on the basis of trade union activists - yes, without any administrative pressure from above, but still all the meetings that took place in the regions were honest, we know it. And the number of claims that have been advanced by the regulatory bodies to us, in my view, was large enough, in the sense that during this process we have received from the Ministry of Justice a decision on the suspension of registration, after which in all regions meetings were again held, which amended, respectively, the initial decisions at regional level, and all the protocols were rebuilt again, and again we handed them over to the Ministry of Justice. And this process was completed only at the end of December, when the day before the "end of the world", which was widely proclaimed but did not happen, we got a decision on the registration of a political party.”
