NOT ENOUGH LABOUR.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 51, Issue 25, 10 November 1930, Page 7

NOT ENOUGH LABOUR.

RUSSIAN NURSES HELP. In contrast to most other countries, the Soviet Union to-day is troubled not bv unemployment but by its reveise, a shortage of labour, which is intensified because the workers move rapidly from one factory or branch of mdustiy to another in search of better conditions and wages, says the ‘Manchestei Guardian.” President Kalinin has published a leading article in Izvestia” on this question urging the managers of industrial undertakings o take a more active part in improving the living conditions and food supply of the workers, declaring that unsatisfactory conditions in this respect are often responsible for the migratory tendencies of the workers. While Soviet economists are not slow to claim for their system the merit of eliminating unemployment the labour shortage is disadvantageous to national economic life. The wholesale withdrawal of miners from the Donetz Basin in the summer months arising partly from bad living conditions and partly from the miners’ desire to help with the good harvest in their native villages, has caused a serious falling-olf in the coal nrogramme, while such important entei - prises as the Turk-Sib railroad and the Magnitogorsk steel plant complain ot the lack of hands. There is an acute shortage of labour in the neighbourhood of Leningrad. A traveller who has just returned from Leningrad states that lie recently witnessed about 200 nurses from various hospitals mobilised for loading timber vessels in port. . Even the matron of a large hospital was obliged to help carry the wood. These nurses received no salary, but Were given one tin of beef and one box of cigarettes daily. The local fire brigades were also engaged in loadings.