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The paper covers the contradictions in industrial relations and the modern ways of resolving them in Russia. Particular attention is paid to preventive resolution as the least controversial, allowing reducing or eliminating the possibility of a conflict within the labor sphere, as a fair and effective method that reduces the burden on civil courts in conditions of limited budget spending. It is advisable to give priority to out-of-court methods for resolving labor disputes, to direct efforts to prevent the emergence of labor conflicts. Implementation of this strategy should be carried out at the macro- and micro levels. The study shows that in order to increase the efficiency of labor inspection in the Russian Federation in the context of limited budgetary sources of funding, there is a need to expand the scope of activities of the Office of State Supervision in the Sphere of Labor. It is also advisable to adjust the priority activities of the labor inspections, mainly in the direction of the implementation of preventive activities. This will lead to the prevention of conflict situations in the organizations, to ensure the improvement of the enforcement of legislation, contracts and labor agreements. In order to work out effective directions, the article summarizes international experience, best practices in the preventive activities of labor inspections in developed countries and in emerging markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prevailing research on political protest—which use data on events in pluralist societies —stresses the importance of target characteristics and the distribution of social support as explanatory variables affecting protest outcomes. This paper questions the applicability of these findings for explaining protest outcomes in hegemonies. An analysis of 303 protest events in the USSR yields the conclusion that measures of the internal strength of protest groups are the most important determinants of the effectiveness of Soviet dissident groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present and estimate a model with strategic complementarities in firms' choices of on-time or delayed wage payment. Linked employer-employee panel data from Russia facilitate identification of the endogenous interactions through fixed effects for firms, workers, and local labor markets, and instrumental variables based on policy interventions. The estimated reaction function displays strongly positive neighborhood effects, and the estimated feedback loops--worker quits, effort, strikes, and legal penalties--imply that costs of wage delays are attenuated by neighborhood arrears. We also study a nonlinear case with two stable symmetric equilibria: a punctual payment and a late payment equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the union recognition dispute that took place at the McDonald's food-processing plant in Moscow. It examines this dispute in the context of McDonald's employment practices worldwide, the interventions made by international and local unions, and Russian government bodies. Despite these interventions it became impossible to either organise the workforce or establish a collective agreement. The case illustrates the difficulties facing both local unions and global union federations when confronted by intransigent multinational companies, especially in low-skilled sectors in transitional economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the Russian miners' strike of February 1996. The Russian coal miners' strike began on February 1, 1996. The February 1996 strike came at an especially delicate time, in a situation in which the Communist Party was on a roll following its electoral triumph, Anatolii Chubais, the last reformer in the government, had just been sacked, and President of Russia Boris Yeltsin was about to announce his candidacy for the June Presidential election. Everybody was desperate to demonstrate their commitment to the people, and the miners once more presented themselves as representative of the people. The background to this strike, as of all those of the past three years, was the economic demands of the miners which focused on the payment of the subsidy due to the industry from the state budget. The February strike revealed the same weaknesses and inadequacies in trade union organisation as had been shown in previous strikes. The weakness of the strike had a number of sources.

The article focuses on the background of the Polish-Russian relations. It stresses that the growing dispute comes from the intervention of the Polish rulers in the internal affairs of the Kievan state and interference of Russian princes of the Polish dynasty. Further, it reveals on the effect of the Tartar invasion in the growth of conflict.