Ukrainian Workers Are Strike-Averse

    Another cool statistics from the Kyiv Post's Maria Shamota shows that Ukrainian workers had the lowest number of strikes in Europe in 2008. Ukrainian employees went on strike only thirteen times. Swedish workers had 18 strikes and British employees went on 144 strikes. Italian workers who are the leaders of the European labor movement went on 1,339 strikes in 2008. Even if you adjust number of strikes per capita, Ukraine still had the lowest number of strikes per capita in Europe.
    There are couple things which puzzle me about these data. First, workers in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, and Czech Republic did not go on strike at all because their strike was either cancelled or a conflict was resolved. Second, I do not see France in this chart while the international mass media often talks about French workers going on strike.
    Anyways, can we really say that Ukrainian workers are more strike-averse than their European colleagues? Is there another explanation behind these data? What if Ukrainian workers incur higher opportunity costs of going on strike than do their European counterparts?