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?
I was surprised when I saw it. Ukraine's economy is not as active as it was in the early 1990s. Number of shipments is still much lower than it was in the early 1990s, reported by the Ukraine's State Statistics Committtee. Here is a very interesting graph that gives you a breakdown of quantity of shipments across Ukraine by type of transportation: air, water (sea and river), and ground (car and train). I wonder what explains a smaller number of shipments now as compared to the early 1990s.
HT Maria Shamota from the KyivPost.
Here is my article in the Kyiv Post. The russian version of my article will come out on Wednesday.
The Ukrainian Weekly (June 5, 2011) has three articles, including mine article, about Ukraine's trade policy. I highly recommend you reading the current issue.
