Meeting trade unionists in Kyiv

Between 11 and 17 November, I was in Ukraine as part of a PCS union delegation. During our stay in Kyiv it was quiet with only three air alerts, which everyone ignored (they have a fine sense of what is dangerous). Unfortunately that quiet period has ended with multiple sustained air attacks in the past week. These have been drone attacks but the attacks that people most fear are ballistic missiles, where you get little or no warning (as you can imagine having discussions about ballistic missiles is slightly surreal).

Everybody I met in Kyiv described living there as being in a bubble, and certainly any notion you have of a city at war was not matched by what we saw while we were there: no blackouts, the streets are crowded, traffic was heavy and the shops full. There was a curfew, but compared to six months ago when there was a blackout, an early curfew, armed checkpoints across Kyiv, the city was more relaxed than in the past.

That said, everyone believed that over the winter, when it gets really cold (temperatures can drop to minus 15ºC), the Russians will again attack the country’s energy and heating infrastructure and try and freeze the people into submission.

Whilst in-country we meet nine unions, visited a hospital, and visited villages and towns that had been on the front line and so saw first-hand damaged buildings.

Trade-union culture is wholly different from that in the UK, certainly for those unions in the FPU, which is a soviet era legacy trade union federation. Instead of membership action and campaigning, FPU unions write letters and try and engage with employers.

There is “social dialogue” where employers and government are meant to consult unions but the clear trajectory of the government is to weaken collective rights of workers. The class war continues amidst the shooting war. This is true for the health service, where the government is seeking to shut hospitals — during a war.

One of the hospitals marked for closure is a children’s hospital which we visited. Staff there are members of the Free Trade Union of Medical Workers, affiliated to the KVPU federation which was a breakaway from the FPU. The KVPU, particularly the miners, have been more militant than FPU unions; but during the war militant action is subdued while attacks on unions are not.

The workers in the children’s hospital have been given an ultimatum to either accept pay cuts or staff cuts.

There are not many children on the wards in the hospital and that is because parents do not want their children to stay overnight for fear of ballistic missile attacks on the hospital. That is the reality of life in Kyiv.

Every one we met had lost a relative or a friend, particularly over the last 12 months. The effects of the war are percolating through society. Although there is much war-weariness, no one we talked to was willing to trade land for peace. As one medic said to me, there is no alternative but to go on.

I encourage members of the labour movement to go to the Ukraine and talk to people first hand. The Ukrainian Solidarity Campaign will help with that. You will see for yourself that this is not a proxy war, that Ukraine is not fascist, that there are free trade unions (despite their difficulties) and freedom of speech, and certainly NATO has nothing to do with the conflict.

Indeed, the worry of the trade union movement is that the “West” will abandon them, get bored or worse, with the possible election of Donald Trump as US President, that a peace deal will be imposed on them. If you believe that the Palestinian people have the right of self-determination then you have to concede that right to the Ukrainian people as well.

• John Moloney is assistant general secretary of PCS, writing here in a personal capacity