Soviet trade unions urged to support reforms

Press, 26 February 1987, Page 7

Soviet trade unions urged to support reforms

NZPA-Reuter Moscow Trade unionists in the Soviet Union are being urged to support the reforms sponsored by the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. The head of Moscow’s official labour movement has declared that trade unions should take special care to protect workers’ interests as the country prepares for far-reaching economic change. At the same time, Mr Stepan Shalayev, who was speaking at the start of a five-yearly union congress yesterday, reaffirmed his movement’s role as a partner of the Communist Party seeking to mobilise workers in the cause of more and better production.

“The Soviet trade unions, which have a membership of 140 million, wholly and fully

support the party’s course aimed at acceleration, reorganisation and democratisation,” Mr Mr Shalayev told 5000 delegates in the Kremlin Grand Palace. Labour issues have come into sharper focus in the Soviet Union as Mr Gorbachev has shed more light on how he intends to reshape the economy.

While touring the Baltic republic of Estonia last week-end, he reassured local people that reductions in the work forces of over-manned Soviet industries would not lead to unemployment because the country had millions of job vacancies.

Another Gorbachev scheme, the creation of new State bodies to monitor the quality of industrial goods, was shown to be a touchy issue last December when the news-

paper “Izvestia” said its introduction had caused “stormy protests” at a large truck plant The incident happened at the Kamaz plant in the city of Brezhnev, in the Tartar autonomous republic. Under the old system, factories did their own quality control checks, which were therefore sometimes less than exacting. Mr Shalayev alluded to the concern of many Soviet workers that they could be held responsible for shoddy goods, when supply bottlenecks and other disruptions were the real problem.

“Workers are wholeheartedly supporting State quality inspection,” he said. “They are not afraid of it But they are justly demanding that orderliness be brought into pro-

duction and the provisions of supplies.” Mr Shalayev also said too many' workers were still doing unskilled, arduous jobs; injuries to the workforces in the oil, timber, communications and merchant marine industries were on the rise; and work conditions for women should improve. Many local authority and trade union leaders were recommended for re-election despite having no interest in their work, and stagnation built up in the Moscow labour movement, he said. Soviet trade unions cooperate with the State in providing health, tourism and sports facilities for workers. According to Marxist-Leninist theory, they could never be antagonistic to State authorities since the State belongs to the workers.

There have been isolated protests at Soviet industrial enterprises over the years, but nothing remotely approaching the Polish labour unrest of 1980 which culminated in the formation of the independent Solidarity trade union.