How Trade Unions Are Helping With Ukraine’s Humanitarian Crisis
Volunteers carry supplies to Kiev on March 3, 2022. (Diego Herrera / Europa Press via Getty Images)
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has already forced 1 million people to flee the country. Across Eastern Europe, organized labor is helping to welcome refugees.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has already forced 1 million people to flee the country. Across Eastern Europe, organized labor is helping to welcome refugees.
At 5 AM last Thursday, Vladimir Putin’s government gave the Russian army the green light to invade Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of refugees started moving out of the country, with volunteers waiting at the border to help with paperwork, food, transportation, and even lodging. NGOs developed information platforms helping refugees to understand the legislation of the countries they are transiting through. Yet trade unions have also been involved — both in Ukraine itself, and in neighboring countries where organized labor is standing with its brothers and sisters.
Labor Under the Bombs
Olesia Briazgunova is the international secretary of the Confederation of Free Trade Unions in Ukraine (KVPU). She was sleeping in her house in Kiev when she was woken by a nearby explosion. For the next three days she stayed in the capital, unwilling to abandon the city she has been calling home in recent years; she said that she would rather fight than leave. Yet the drastic circumstances soon forced her out of Kiev, to an undisclosed location from which we talked; she whispered to me over the phone, with the lights in the apartment turned off. Olesia said that she was afraid of the Russian military finding out where she was, especially since the KVPU has explicitly condemned the Russian invasion.
In the first three days she could not sleep, but stifled her tears: she wanted to be strong for her mother. But after a couple of days, her feelings ambushed her, especially when her best friend wrote to her, saying that she loves her and that she is prepared to die. When we spoke, Olesia referred to her trade union brothers and sisters, saying how many of them have either fled the country or headed off to fight. They have mobilized people wherever they could, all around Ukraine, helping people move around and organize bunkers and supply centers. They have found refuge in undisclosed locations where they are preparing resource-packages for the people who are fleeing, but also providing protective gear to those that need to fight.
This is not the first time that trade unions have had to adapt to a war situation. In 2014, with the conflict in the Donbas, the KPVU also had to get everyone out. Olesia recalls how some of the local leaders were kidnapped and trade union organizations were forbidden in the eastern part of Ukraine. Now, they are trying to help as much as possible, getting people out to safe houses and offering them resources. But intervening on the ground is more difficult than ever. The situation no longer allows trade unions to call for peace with marches in the streets where unions wave their flags. According to Olesia:
In an international virtual meeting of more than a hundred eighty union leaders from Europe, Ukrainian labor union leaders reemphasized the humanitarian crisis which everyone is going through. KPVU deputy chair Nataliya Levytska spoke about her family, about how saddening it is to have six children who have to experience war. She said:
Trade unions quickly mobilized at an international level to lend help to people in Ukraine. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) condemned the invasion, demanding that all Russian forces leave Ukraine immediately. The ITUC developed a support fund, where they encourage individuals and organizations to donate money so that they can support the major Ukrainian trade union confederations (Federation of Trade Unions or FPU, and KVPU) in purchasing food, water, medical supplies, and hygienic items. Public service unions EPSU and PSI organized a public meeting in which Ukrainian trade union members shared their stories of what it means to live during times of war. Union members expressed deep feelings of sadness, wishing that no one else in their family will have to live through such turbulent conditions.
Helping Refugees
In countries neighboring Ukraine, trade unions focused their attention on getting resources to the refugees transiting through their countries or else seeking asylum.