WAGES UNDER THE SOVIET.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18890, 12 December 1924, Page 7

WAGES UNDER THE SOVIET.

ONLY HALF PRE-WAR VALUE. INCREASING UNEMPLOYMENT. The International Labour Office 1 , a de' partment of the League of Nations, has published a valuable study on " Indus- | trial Life in Soviet Russia," showing that £ industrial conditions in Russia remain . deplorable. The report states that the average wage paid in State industry during the second half of 1923 was not mow than,(ss per cent, of the pre-war average, which itself was very low, yet these wages are still too heavy a burden on State industry, and the Government has taken \ steps to prevent further increases. This general tendency'toward a fall in ' J wages is attributed by the managers of | nationalised industry to the many expenses which have to be borne in addition to wages properly so called. In spite of the considerable increases in rates fixed by collective agreement and labour agreements, real wages are in practice always subject to. reductions; and ttiore is no improvement ifi the general situation of the working classes owing ti). the continual depreciation of the rouble and financial crisis. After an examination of the position of the trade unions,* the report says that the directing trade union . bodies still regard themselves as Government bodies responsible for the actions of the Government, and in consequence defend and carry into effect the measures adopted by the economic authorities. The vast non-political masses are thus losing confidence in the trado unions. The actual wage of workers appears, according to the Department of Labour statistics of the Soviet Government, to have risen among railway workers by the end of last year to something under 40s a month, but this year it fell to some 265, while the actual value of present wages is stated, in a report submitted by the Central Committee of the Railwaymen's Union, to be equal to 41 per cent, of the pre-revolution wage. As to housing conditions, even for the workers—the mostfavoured class in Russia—they are deplorable. It appears that the Commissariat of Transport can house only 27 per cent, of the men it employs. A very large number of the men are compelled to live in railway carriages, and it appears that 6363 goods waggons and 1604 railway carriages were immobilised for this purpose in May of this year. Unemployment, which has been rampant since 1922, is continuing to increase. Returns of registered unemployed in 70 capital towns of departments, including Moscow and Petrograd, showed a total of 308,200 in October, 1922; the number was 672,900 in October, 1923.; and by last February had increased to 812,000. Not all the unemployed are registered at the exchanges, so that'the real number is higher 4 than the figures given. In December,. 1923. of the unemployed 36.6 per cent. were intellectual workers, 24.6 per cent* skilled workers, and 25.4 per cent. manual labourers.