Reportage
Ukrainian union leader says he’s a political prisoner for defending workers
Hryhoriy Osovyi: ‘In this climate, the majority has put forward new bills that once again cut social standards. And once more, we have become inconvenient opponents in the government’s eyes.’
He does not fear accusations of collusion with the enemy; his conscience is clear. This is why he is able to discuss matters in terms nobody would expect during wartime: “The reason for my detention is political. By criminalizing me, they are attacking the unions that are defending workers’ rights.”
Hryhoriy Osovyi, 76, is general secretary of the FPU, the Ukrainian trade-union confederation with three million members. Arrested on April 8, he spent one night in jail before a judge placed him under house arrest. On June 9, another hearing will decide whether that measure is renewed.
He stands accused, along with five other union officials, of selling properties that belong to the organization but are now claimed by the state. The charges – conspiracy, misappropriation and money laundering – carry a maximum penalty of 12 years. Report, which will broadcast an in-depth segment on Ukraine on June 15, met Osovyi in Kyiv on May 17. This was his first interview since the arrest – not merely with international media but with any outlet at all, because, he says, on Ukraine’s single television channel, set up after martial law, “the unions have no voice.”
Police arrested him at 7 a.m. in a Lutsk hotel, minutes before a scheduled meeting. “They confiscated my phone and tablet and drove me to Kyiv,” he recalls. Authorities claim he was trying to flee the country. “An absurd scenario. I went to my office every day. When they arrested me, I had no passport and nowhere near enough money to leave.” Bail was his only path to freedom: “The judge set it at 100 million hryvnia. More than $2 million, which, I calculated, amounts to my salary for 200 years. That shows how much pressure was brought to bear on me, to intimidate me. I know exactly what they want: a union that would support the governing majority’s reforms.”
What are these reforms? To get a clear picture, one must go back to the pre-war period. “For years, we had good relations with the successive governments. Then, in 2019, both the parliamentary majority and the president changed. Since then, the cabinet has pursued reforms that are harmful to unions and workers. And a bitter fight began.”
The conflict peaked in December 2019, when Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk unveiled Bill 2708, simply titled On Work. The bill rewrote the entire labor framework “without any discussion with the social partners, in an authoritarian manner,” Osovyi accuses. In his words, “it abolished the labor code, in violation of international conventions and the right to organize.” He maintains that the reforms were backed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, already actively involved in Ukraine at the time.
The new code allowed individual contracts to override collective agreements, made firings easier and raised steep barriers to union presence in workplaces. The FPU responded with marches, sit-ins and strikes outside Parliament and the president’s office. The dispute found an echo beyond the country’s borders: the ILO criticized the bill, and, Osovyi recalls, “in February 2021 the general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation went to Ukraine to persuade the government it was going down the wrong path.”
In the end, the unions won: the government fell and the bill was withdrawn. That marked President Zelensky’s lowest approval rating, Osovyi says; at the time, he cut a figure of moral rectitude, a scourge of oligarchs and corruption, but in terms of the economy pursued a strongly neoliberal line.
“Precisely because we had won, MP Halyna Tretyakova – from the Servant of the People party and a leading sponsor of the bill – filed a complaint accusing us of lacking legal title to our properties,” many of them inherited from Soviet times. “From that moment, prosecutors had us in the crosshairs. Law-enforcement agencies, security services, police – there were investigations on the union’s properties everywhere, with searches, seizures, interrogations.” Even the FPU headquarters on Maidan Square became a target: during the 2014 Revolution of Dignity – “supported by the unions,” he stresses – the building was torched. “We rebuilt it with union funds, yet the government still wants to seize it.”
Then war broke out, and everything grew worse. Osovyi says that Ukraine’s tripartite Economic and Social Council, on which he is supposed to serve as vice-chair, has not met since 2022. Martial law “bars strikes and demonstrations. In this climate, the majority has put forward new bills that once again cut social standards. And once more, we have become inconvenient opponents in the government’s eyes,” he says.
According to Osovyi, the cabinet’s vision is “influenced by the IMF and global capital, which are demanding neoliberal reforms to attract investment to Ukraine. We are not against investment, but we have the lowest wages in Europe, and we are demanding that foreign companies should pay Ukrainian workers European wages. That stance is clearly ruffling feathers in Ukraine today. And it’s a very serious situation, because under our Constitution, my country is supposed to be a democratic one.”
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/sono-un-detenuto-politico-di-kiev on 2025-06-05