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MongoliaTrade Unions
Mongolia's trade union movement initially had a difficult
start, but then it settled down to peaceful growth as a useful
tool of the regime. In 1917 Mongolia's first two trade unions,
which had mostly Russian and few Mongolian members, were
established but trade unionists were murdered in 1920 by troops
of the White Russian baron, Roman Nicolaus von Ungern-Sternberg
(see Period of Autonomy, 1911-21
, ch. 1). Reestablished in 1921
with 300 members, the unions were reorganized in 1925 into
Mongolian, Chinese, and Russian chapters. In August 1927, 115
delegates, representing 4,056 union members, held the First
Congress of Mongolian Trade Unions, establishing the Mongolian
trade union movement in the form it still maintained in the late
1980s. In 1927, as in the late 1980s, the organization and
functions of Mongolia's trade unions were patterned on those of
the Soviet Union
(see Planned Modernization
, ch. 2;
Mass Organizations
, ch. 4).
In the late 1980s, the highest-level trade union organization
was the Mongolian Trade Unions Congress, which was convened every
five years; the thirteenth congress was held in 1987. In the
interim, trade union affairs were run by the Central Council of
Mongolian Trade Unions. The chairman of the Central Council was a
member of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party Central
Committee and of the Presidium of the People's Great Hural
(see Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party
, ch. 4;
Government Structure
, ch. 4). Mongolian trade unions, through the Central
Council, possessed the right of legislative initiative in the
People's Great Hural. Below the Central Council were four branch
union organizations--each run by its own central committee--for
agricultural workers; for construction and industrial workers;
for workers and employees in transport, for communications,
trade, and services; and for employees in culture and education.
Each aymag, as well as Ulaanbaatar, Darhan, and Erdenet,
had its own trade union council, as did the Ulaanbaatar Railroad.
Below the provincial level there were 3,000 primary trade union
committees and more than 7,000 trade union groups. The Central
Council published the newspaper Hodolmor (Labor) three
times a week and the magazine Mongolyn Uyldberchniy Eblel
(Mongolian Trade Unions) six times a year. In 1982 there were
425,000 trade union members. In 1984 about 94.7 percent of all
office and professional workers and laborers in the national
economy were trade unionists, and members of the working class
accounted for 55.8 percent of trade union membership.
Mongolian trade unions did not engage in collective
bargaining to represent worker interests to management as was
done in capitalist countries. Instead, Mongolia's trade unions
had a variety of functions. Politically, trade unions received
party and state guidance and served regime goals by ". . .
[contributing] to winning over the masses in order to succeed in
the implementation of the social and economic policy of the
party." The Mongolian trade unions were active in the
international arena; the Central Council of Mongolian Trade
Unions joined the World Federation of Trade Unions in 1949, and
Mongolia joined the International Labour Organization in 1968.
The Central Council maintained contacts with more than sixty
foreign trade union organizations, and it sent delegations to all
World Federation of Trade Unions congresses and other
international trade union conferences. Mongolian delegations to
conferences sponsored by the Soviet Union and other socialist
countries frequently issued communiques or statements supporting
Soviet, and criticizing United States, policies.
The most important functions of Mongolian trade unions were,
according to the 1973 Labor Code, "[to] represent the interests
of workers and employees in the realm of production, labor, life,
and culture, participate in working out and realizing state plans
for the development of the national economy, decide questions of
the distribution and use of material and financial resources,
involve workers and employees in production management, organize
the socialist competition and mass technical creativity, and
promote the strengthening of production and labor discipline."
Together, or by agreement with enterprises, institutions, and
organizations and their superior agencies, trade unions
influenced labor conditions and earnings, the application of
labor legislation, and the use of social consumption funds.
Specifically, this meant trade unions supervised the observance
of labor legislation and rules for labor protection, controlled
housing and domestic services for workers and employees, and
managed state social insurance as well as trade union
sanatoriums, dispensaries, rest homes, and cultural and sports
institutions. In practice, the major function of trade unions was
the administration of state social insurance and of worker health
and recreation facilities.
Despite the broad rights granted to the trade union movement,
not all trade union bodies carried out their stipulated
functions. In a May 1987 address to the Thirteenth Congress of
Mongolian Trade Unions, party general secretary Jambyn Batmonh
criticized some trade union councils for being "on the leash of
the enterprises' administrations," that is, emphasizing the
fulfillment of plans while neglecting labor productivity and
substandard working and living conditions. Batmonh also called on
enterprises and their supervisory government bodies to observe
labor laws strictly and not to oppose the legitimate demands of
trade union groups.
Data as of June 1989
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