Soviet Law and the Security of Work

Abstract

In the last two chapters I illustrated and discussed some of the problems that employees are likely to face if they indulge in criticism of management. It has become clear that one of the difficulties has to do with the ability of managers to penalise subordinates who have made themselves unpopular. For this reason a conflict which revolves around abuse of office will often also turn into a dispute within the terms of Soviet labour law. The position of the critic within the organisation will partly hinge, then, on the amount of protection offered by Soviet law to employees as employees. This is the issue on which I shall be focusing in the present chapter. My main purpose has been to get a fuller picture of the problems faced by the whistleblowers. But the discussion also raises some general questions about the nature and extent of job security in the Soviet Union, which are worth commenting on.