Internal mobility and labour market flexibility in Russia

Europe - Asia Studies

Volumn 51, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 213-243

  Clarke, Simon ^a   Donova, Inna ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EMPLOYMENT; LABOR MARKET; MOBILITY;

RUSSIAN FEDERATION;

EID: 0033061582     PISSN: 09668136     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09668139999010     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. If a worker could arrange for the move to be registered as a transfer, then some entitlements would be retained. According to the official figures, only 8% of separations in industry in 1989 were transfers, 45% were voluntary quits, 8% for disciplinary reasons, 28% involved departure from the labour force and 12% terminations, most of which involved temporary contracts (IMF, World Bank & OECD, A Study of the Soviet Economy, 2, 1991, p. 143). More generally, an enterprise director might offer enhanced benefits, particularly in the form of priority allocation of housing, as a means of attracting experienced skilled workers from other enterprises.
2. S. Alasheev, 'On a Particular Kind of Love and the Specificity of Soviet Production', in S. Clarke (ed.), Management and Industry in Russia: Formal and Informal Relations in the Russian Industrial Enterprise(Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 1995).
3. P. B. Doeringer & M. J. Piore, Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis (Lexington, Heath, 1971).
4. R. Edwards, The Contested Terrain (New York, Basic Books, 1979); J. Bulow & L. Summers, 'A Theory of Dual Labour Markets with Applications to Industrial Policy, Discrimination and Keynesian Unemployment', Journal of Labour Economics, 4, 1986, pp. 376-414.
5. R. Edwards, The Contested Terrain (New York, Basic Books, 1979); J. Bulow & L. Summers, 'A Theory of Dual Labour Markets with Applications to Industrial Policy, Discrimination and Keynesian Unemployment', Journal of Labour Economics, 4, 1986, pp. 376-414.
6. There has been some discussion of increased labour market flexibility in the Russian literature, but this relates to such aspects of flexibility as lay-offs, short-time working and the non-payment of wages rather than functional flexibility involving the internal redeployment and retraining of labour (I. T. Perova, 'Vnutrennii rynok truda: zanyatost' v otsenkakh rabotnikov raznykh professional'nostatusnykh grupp', Ekonomicheskie i sotsial'nye peremeny: monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya (VTsIOM), 1996, 6(26), pp. 33-36; IE RAN, Mekhanizmy adaptatsii vnutrennego rynka truda predpriyatii k novym ekonomicheskim usloviyam (1995). The Russian Labour Flexibility Survey contains useful data on training and internal mobility (G. Standing, Russian Unemployment and Enterprise Restructuring: Reviving Dead Souls (Harmondsworth, Macmillan, 1996), Chapter 8). On the concept of flexibility sec Anna Pollert, Farewell to Flexibility? Questions of Restructuring (Oxford, Blackwell, 1991).
7. There has been some discussion of increased labour market flexibility in the Russian literature, but this relates to such aspects of flexibility as lay-offs, short-time working and the non-payment of wages rather than functional flexibility involving the internal redeployment and retraining of labour (I. T. Perova, 'Vnutrennii rynok truda: zanyatost' v otsenkakh rabotnikov raznykh professional'nostatusnykh grupp', Ekonomicheskie i sotsial'nye peremeny: monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya (VTsIOM), 1996, 6(26), pp. 33-36; IE RAN, Mekhanizmy adaptatsii vnutrennego rynka truda predpriyatii k novym ekonomicheskim usloviyam (1995). The Russian Labour Flexibility Survey contains useful data on training and internal mobility (G. Standing, Russian Unemployment and Enterprise Restructuring: Reviving Dead Souls (Harmondsworth, Macmillan, 1996), Chapter 8). On the concept of flexibility sec Anna Pollert, Farewell to Flexibility? Questions of Restructuring (Oxford, Blackwell, 1991).
8. There has been some discussion of increased labour market flexibility in the Russian literature, but this relates to such aspects of flexibility as lay-offs, short-time working and the non-payment of wages rather than functional flexibility involving the internal redeployment and retraining of labour (I. T. Perova, 'Vnutrennii rynok truda: zanyatost' v otsenkakh rabotnikov raznykh professional'nostatusnykh grupp', Ekonomicheskie i sotsial'nye peremeny: monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya (VTsIOM), 1996, 6(26), pp. 33-36; IE RAN, Mekhanizmy adaptatsii vnutrennego rynka truda predpriyatii k novym ekonomicheskim usloviyam (1995). The Russian Labour Flexibility Survey contains useful data on training and internal mobility (G. Standing, Russian Unemployment and Enterprise Restructuring: Reviving Dead Souls (Harmondsworth, Macmillan, 1996), Chapter 8). On the concept of flexibility sec Anna Pollert, Farewell to Flexibility? Questions of Restructuring (Oxford, Blackwell, 1991).
9. There has been some discussion of increased labour market flexibility in the Russian literature, but this relates to such aspects of flexibility as lay-offs, short-time working and the non-payment of wages rather than functional flexibility involving the internal redeployment and retraining of labour (I. T. Perova, 'Vnutrennii rynok truda: zanyatost' v otsenkakh rabotnikov raznykh professional'nostatusnykh grupp', Ekonomicheskie i sotsial'nye peremeny: monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya (VTsIOM), 1996, 6(26), pp. 33-36; IE RAN, Mekhanizmy adaptatsii vnutrennego rynka truda predpriyatii k novym ekonomicheskim usloviyam (1995). The Russian Labour Flexibility Survey contains useful data on training and internal mobility (G. Standing, Russian Unemployment and Enterprise Restructuring: Reviving Dead Souls (Harmondsworth, Macmillan, 1996), Chapter 8). On the concept of flexibility sec Anna Pollert, Farewell to Flexibility? Questions of Restructuring (Oxford, Blackwell, 1991).
10. IMF et al., A study ...; I. Zaslavsky & M. Moskvina, 'Kto ostanetsya za porogom prokhodnoi?', Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya, 16, 1, 1989, pp. 37-42.
11. V. S. Nemchenko et al., Sotsial'no-ekonomicheskie voprosy organizatsii truda (Moscow, MGU, 1974); Vnutrizavodskoe dvizhenie i tekuchest' rabochikh kadrov (Novosibirsk, Nauka, 1981).
12. V. S. Nemchenko et al., Sotsial'no-ekonomicheskie voprosy organizatsii truda (Moscow, MGU, 1974); Vnutrizavodskoe dvizhenie i tekuchest' rabochikh kadrov (Novosibirsk, Nauka, 1981).
13. 90% of all inter-shop transitions at the Altai tractor factory took place on the initiative of the worker (Sotsial'no-ekonomicheskie problemy truda na promyshlennom predpriyatii (Novosibirsk, Nauka, 1979).
14. K. Hendley, 'Does Law Matter in the Soviet Economic Reform Process? A Case Study of the Law Governing Internal Transfers', Review of Central and East European Law, 18, 2, 1992, pp. 128, 132; K. Hendley, Trying to Make Law Matter: Legal Reform and Labor Law in the Soviet Union (Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 98-99.
15. K. Hendley, 'Does Law Matter in the Soviet Economic Reform Process? A Case Study of the Law Governing Internal Transfers', Review of Central and East European Law, 18, 2, 1992, pp. 128, 132; K. Hendley, Trying to Make Law Matter: Legal Reform and Labor Law in the Soviet Union (Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 98-99.
16. The research was supported by the British Economic and Social Research Council and followed an earlier pilot study funded by the Overseas Development Administration. The case studies focused on two shops, one main production and one auxiliary shop, in each enterprise. Full details, fieldwork reports and statistical sources can be obtained from the project website, www:warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/complabstuds/russia/russint.htm.
17. The 807 respondents gave us information on a total of 2064 work episodes during which there were 8907 reported transfers of all kinds. This was intended to be a representative sample of the employees in the shops which were the focus of the case study research. However, there were major problems in drawing such a sample because there was not a suitable sampling frame in every case, and there were also major difficulties in contacting workers, particularly where many were on administrative leave. The respondents were stratified to ensure equal numbers of men and women in each enterprise (in most of our enterprises the numbers are approximately equal in any case). The main purpose of the survey was to look at external mobility, so the sample was also stratified to ensure that 80% of respondents had moved to their present job within the previous five years.
18. In the four Syktyvkar enterprises more detailed notes were made on the responses to the 200 work history interviews conducted. In three of those enterprises a full set of personnel data was entered from personal cards of current and past employees. In the pilot stage of the research work histories were collected from a further 260 workers in 12 enterprises in Kemerovo and Samara, including four new private enterprises.
19. The sample is potentially biased in favour of long tenure because the work histories begin not at a fixed date, but from the starting date of the job held in 1985, or the first job for post-1985 labour market entrants. If we exclude jobs which began before 1985 the coefficient comes down to 0.2-0.3.
20. The figures quoted are the median duration before the event, calculated from life tables, weighted to allow for the stratification of the sample by tenure (the weighting makes little substantive difference to any of the results, apart from average job tenure, which is five and a half years in the unweighted sample). Respondents only reported the number of transfers of each type in the particular employment, and also the duration of employment. The duration before the event is then estimated as the duration of employment divided by the number of events. Since the majority of jobs only involve one transition, this will probably provide us with an over-estimate of the median duration so the results reported here are only indicative.
21. The result should be treated with some caution because the latter category will be biased in favour of more mobile individuals.
22. The Novosibirsk authors of research at the Altai tractor factory came to similar conclusions (Sotsial'no-ekonomicheskie problemy ...).
23. The situation is different in small enterprises, where there is much less scope for promotion, with less occupational diversity and fewer rungs on the managerial career ladder. In new private enterprises senior positions tend to be monopolised by the founders of the enterprise and their friends, providing even less scope for career advance through internal promotion.
24. C.f. P. Smirnov, 'The Economic Development of Industrial Enterprises and the Dynamics and Structure of Employment', in S. Clarke (ed.), Structural Adjustment without Mass Unemployment? Lessons from Russia (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 1998).
25. The Russian Labour Flexibility Survey found that most training is on-the-job and that by all measures training has been in steady decline, with a lower incidence in private enterprises (Standing, pp. 242-248).
26. C.f. G. Monousova & N. Guskova, 'Internal Mobility and the Restructuring of Labour' in S. Clarke (ed.), Labour in Transition: Wages, Employment and Labour Relations in Russian Industrial Enterprises (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 1996).
27. M. Ilyina, 'Foremen: An Ethnographic Study', in S. Clarke (ed.), Labour in Transition: Wages, Employment and Labour Relations in Russian Industrial Enterprises, (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 1996).
28. This is indirectly indicated by the conclusions of the research on internal mobility in AZLK (Sotsialno-ekonomicheskie voprosy ...), which concluded that inter-occupational mobility was closely connected with other kinds of mobility, in most cases being accompanied by changes of shop, improvement of professional skill or transition to another category of staff.
29. Z. V. Kupriyanova, 'Real'naya i potentsial'naya professional'naya mobil'nost' v Rossiiskoi Federatsii', Ekonomicheskie i sotsial'nye peremeny: monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya, (VTsIOM), 1997, 4, pp. 26-30, and tables.
30. Alasheev,
31. The Russian Labour Flexibility Survey reported that almost two-thirds of enterprises used internal transfers as a means of limiting redundancy in 1994 (Standing, p. 253).
32. T. Metalina, 'Employment policy in an industrial enterprise', in S. Clarke (ed.), Labour in Transition: Wages, Employment and Labour Relations in Russia Industrial Enterprises (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 1996).
33. The formation of such spin-offs may be motivated by a concern to establish the more viable activities on a sound institutional basis, unencumbered by the liabilities of the parent company, so that in an extreme case the assets are devolved to subsidiary companies while the liabilities remain with the parent. In the Russian context it is not difficult to arrange things so that the subsidiary companies are privately owned by the management and its associates, while the previous shareholders (who may predominantly be existing workers and the government) remain owners of the derelict parent company.
34. ISITO & CCLS, 'The Restructuring of Employment and the Formation of a Labour Market in Russia' (Veronika Kabalina), Coventry, Centre for Comparative Labour Studies, University of Warwick, 1996.
35. P. Romanov, 'Middle Management in Industrial Production in the Transition to the Market', in S. Clarke (ed.), Management and Industry in Russia: Formal and Informal Relations in the Period of Transition (Cheltenham; Edward Elgar, 1995); S. Clarke, V. Kabalina, I. Kozina, I. Donova & M. Karelina, 'The Restructuring of Employment and the Formation of a Labour Market in Russia,' in S. Clarke (ed.), Structural Adjustment without Mass Unemployment? Lessons from Russia (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 1998).
36. P. Romanov, 'Middle Management in Industrial Production in the Transition to the Market', in S. Clarke (ed.), Management and Industry in Russia: Formal and Informal Relations in the Period of Transition (Cheltenham; Edward Elgar, 1995); S. Clarke, V. Kabalina, I. Kozina, I. Donova & M. Karelina, 'The Restructuring of Employment and the Formation of a Labour Market in Russia,' in S. Clarke (ed.), Structural Adjustment without Mass Unemployment? Lessons from Russia (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 1998).
37. Although large and medium industrial enterprises continue external hiring at a rate of around 20% per annum, there are very substantial variations between occupations and between enterprises, from very high turnover among unskilled male workers at derelict enterprises to very low rates among skilled female workers and specialists at more prosperous enterprises.
38. S. Clarke, 'Structural Adjustment without Mass Unemployment? Lessons from Russia,' in S. Clarke (ed.), Structural Adjustment without Mass Unemployment? Lessons from Russia (Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 1998).
39. A supplement which we attached to the Goskomstat Labour Force Survey in two oblasti in November 1997 revealed that 98% of employees of state and former state enterprises and 93% of employees of new private enterprises were still employed on the traditional permanent full-time basis.