The Labour Crisis - a Challenge for Diaconia
Networking in a neo-industrial situation
In the Most coal-mining region, 145 towns and villages have been destroyed because of coal mines and industry. In the last of these villages, even a prison was destroyed - 70 workplaces were lost. And maybe in this prison, once upon a time, two prisoners sat and talked.
"Why are you here?" asked one.
"I am here because I was lazy."
"No! I don't believe that. Nobody in these times gets put in prison because he is lazy."
"Well, I did. You see, one day after work I went to the pub. I met Josef Novak there and we had a drink and started telling jokes. We drank some more and then we started telling political jokes. On the way home, I was thinking, 'should I denounce Josef Novak to the Secret Police now or tomorrow?' and I decided, tomorrow. Novak was not so lazy, and that's why I am in prison now and Novak is a hero."
Maybe it happened, maybe not. But our struggle is with the feelings behind this joke. People are afraid to be open, to cooperate, to have fun together or to trust each other. That struggle is still the most difficult and the most important work for diaconia in Most.
Short introduction to Most District
Most was an agricultural centre until the Industrial Revolution. Change was rapid when coal became an important commodity and many new mines opened in this area. Towns and villages changed their traditional faces and new work forces moved into them. Bad working conditions and every economic depression that occurred caused this region to be unstable. Conflicts and fights between representatives of the German majority and the Czech minority become more and more of a problem. Following the Munich Agreement, Most was one of the parts of the Czechoslovak Republic which was annexed by the German Third Reich, and most of the Czech population moved elsewhere in Czechoslovakia. During the war new industry was constructed, especially power plants and big chemical factories. The most important was Hermann Goering Werke, the factory making the fuel for the German army from coal. After the war its name was changed successively to Stalin Factory, to Lenin Factory, to Czechoslovak-Soviet Union Friendship Factory, and today it is simply Chemopetrol.
After World War II, when Most again became part of Czechoslovakia, most of the German population was transferred to Germany. Because industry was increasing, new settlements of people from all over Czechoslovakia were formed. In the 1950s the Communists brought in new mining technology - large-scale open cast mining. They destroyed one village after another and the district town of Most as well. Thousands of people moved every year - no wonder, they did not feel at home anywhere. The new city of Most was built from the 1960s onwards as an example of a modern socialist city, but it was never finished. Nowadays I feel that it is just a concentration of anonymous living places for 70,000 people. After the changes in 1989, the old power elites merely changed their clothes. Old industries - coal mining, chemistry and energy - were rationalized. This meant they produced more with many fewer people. Wages in Most are still among the highest in the Czech Republic, but we also have the highest unemployment rate - 21%. The gap between rich and poor is widening. People are resigned and don't have faith that they can change the situation.
Diaconia in Most
In the early 1990s, a few people in the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren started a discussion about the living and working conditions of people from industrial or former industrial towns. Is it enough to help individuals in an extreme emergency, or should we also help them to change the causes of their misery? Do we have enough information about the lives of these people? Do we know, and do we want to know, about their situation? Should this be a place for the church to work? These were the most urgent questions.
After some difficulties, the diaconia department of the Czech Brethren Church decided to start a temporary project in Most - the Co-operation Forum. This project was oriented to research, developing new projects and networking with NGOs and individuals who are doing, and want to do, something to change the situation in this area.
We have seen that unemployed people are frustrated not only by financial need, but mainly by the loss of their social status, of the purpose of their existence. This includes frustration in connection with the classic understanding of family, in which men must have the role of breadwinner. In such great industrial agglomerations, these unemployed persons also tend not to have many friends. Atomized individuals from nuclear families find it very difficult to find a community. The "struggle for social survival" of young people is connected with negation of the work ethos, with escape into gangs, extremist groups, drugs and criminality. Among adults, resignation and alcoholism predominate. Increases in unemployment also cause selling of job opportunities to get worse. People have less interest in education, decrease their activities and job searches, and those in work are less productive. One of my friends from Germany calls this the "St. Resignatius Syndrome". From empirical experience, let me say that this situation occurs with 10-16% of unemployment, depending on the cultural context - rates are higher in more industrialised areas. Areas with high unemployment are also threatened with a reduction of democracy; its role is taken over by economic forces or, in the worst case, by criminal elements. The reaction to this opens the way for extremist groups to win votes.
The Cooperation Forum started with workshops, seminars and public actions on different popular issues in the region. I should like to mention particularly our involvement in the opposition to closing the local railroad from Most to the mountains. We organized a workshop on this topic with professionals and authorities from the local and national governments; we participated in the political negotiations, and we called on other organizations to get involved in the movement. At least the railroad was not closed, and we gained many contacts and possibilities for cooperation with other organizations.
We organized meetings between NGOs, at which we informed each other about our work. Later we held a workshop on possible cooperation, at least building a network to improve coordination and more efficient assertion of our needs in negotiations with the city, district, and agencies apportioning EU money. This workshop was finally set up this spring.
These meetings showed an absolutely urgent need for a women's refuge in Most, for single mothers and women in need. We decided to construct one ourselves, and it will open next month. We built it with our own work force, especially long-term unemployed young people. More then 40 unemployed people have worked on our various projects in last 3 years.
What I like is that people here are gaining an understanding for others who live in much worse conditions. Diaconia in Most participated in the Jubilee 2000 movement. In cooperation with other Czech Jubilee partners, we prepared a joint programme of meetings, interfaith worship and a march for participants from all over Europe during the World Bank and IMF meeting in Prague.
We cooperate with trade unions as well. There was lot of prejudice in the beginning, since the Most region is one of the most secularized areas in Europe. But during a crisis we may be able to help unions with their negotiations, or through contacts with similar trade unions in the EU. Sometimes the latter are very important, because within some multinational companies there are very different working conditions, mostly from country to country. If there is good cooperation between the relevant national trade unions, then the strong national unions can advocate for the others.
This has all happened in an historically short period. Now it is no longer a temporary project. It is a Diaconal Centre for Social and Economic Activities. We have two buildings, I am someone who is called 'director', and we employ 16 people. I have not mentioned our work with women, migrants, and young people, or our political work. I would like to say that, according to our experience with beginning from nothing in nowhere, we follow an empirical scheme with these important steps in our projects:
research;
contacting people and motivating them;
developing good contacts with local, national and international partners;
starting the project according to the local needs, and focused on the local context;
specialized work on structural changes.
(Connected with the public campaign)