INSIDE RUSSIA

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 72, Issue 6243, 17 June 1946, Page 7

INSIDE RUSSIA

THE TRADE UNION IN THE SOVIET SYSTEM

AN INFLUENTIAL INSTRUMENT

[By J. J. Maloney, lately Australian Minister to Russia, in the Sydney Morning Herald!

One of the most influential instruments of the Soviet State is that of the All Union Central Council of Trade Unions, a body which controls and directs the whole of the trade union movements of the U.S.S.R.

This organisation, which claims to have almost 100 per cent, trade unionism throughout the U.S.S.R. and a membership of 27,000,000, is undoubtedly, as its president claims it to be, a “transmission belt between the party and the masses.”

It is, moreover, a one-way transmission belt. The All Union Central Council of Trade Unions, instead of fighting the Government for improved standards of living for its members, plays the reverse role and forces upon its members the orders and laws of the Government and the responsibility for any shortcomings in their standard of living or requirements. Since 1933, when the Soviet Government abolished the Commissariat for Labour and entrusted the functions formerly carried out by that body to the Soviet trade unions, the trade unions have become organisations for the enforcement of industrial discipline, as well as the administration of social laws affecting the workers. Undoubtedly the greater part of the work of the Soviet trade unions’ internal activities is devoted to enforcing industrial discipline upon its members and ensuring to the Government the continuance of a trade union organisation that is subservient to the State. ilt is the trade unions that initiate the drive for greater production and the lessening of labour costs. 'lt is the trade unions which heap abuse on the heads of the workers who either cannot or will not keep pace with the speed merchants on the job.

It is the trade unions which differentiate between their own members as to who may enter a rest home or sanatorium, or whose children may enter the factory creche or kindergarten.

It is the Soviet trade union which complains most bitterly against other Soviet legal authorities not enforcing the harsh laws of the country upon workers guilty of breaches of industrial discipline, and it is the trade unions which brand their members as criminals for disobeying the industrial discipline methods. It is the Soviet trade unions which complain about the filthy conditions of the dormitories in which hundreds of thousands of young boys and girls who are enrolled in the Labour Reserves are compelled to live. But their complaints are always directed against the director of a plant or some other individual, never against the Government, for not ensuring better living conditions. As it is the duty of the Soviet trade union movement to enforce industrial discipline, it is not likely to call a strike. It is little wonder that there are no strikes in the U.S.S.R., for legislation to deal with any person who might get any such idea as striking is most drastic.

Any breach of industrial discipline or objection to Government orders is regarded by the Soviet trade unions as a criminal offence, and their choice of the word “criminal” is no doubt due to the legislation protecting the State from such happenings being part of the criminal code of the country. Under these laws any transport worker who commits a breach of industrial discipline, such as a breach of traffic regulations, bad repairs to lines or rolling stock, failure to dispatch a train or boat to time, or failure to turn trucks or vessels around quickly, is liable to a sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment.

If the authorities regard such breaches of industrial discipline as being obviously malicious then the offender will be sentenced to be shot and his property confiscated. To protect the “shock workers” in industry and on collective farms from the wrath of any of their fellow employees who might resent this method of forcing them to greater production a special law regards any blow or other form of violence inflicted upon ‘a shock worker because of his work as an offence carrying a prison term of up to five years. Of course, if the authorities take a very serious view of any such assult the offender will be liable to be shot.

'The law provides that any public insult to any representative of authority in the execution of his official duty entails the deprivation of liberty for a period not exceeding six months or a fine of 500 roubles. Thus a worker who insults a Soviet official may be sent to prison for a term not exceeding six nlonths, but if the same worker gave a shock worker a light smack across the face because of his methods of work, then he would be liable to go to prison for five years. Probably there is no organisation that knows the value of printed propaganda better than the Communist Party.

Under a law of the criminal code, any worker who indulges in propaganda or agitation to .weaken Soviet authority, or prepares, has in his possession, or distributes any literature containing such propaganda, is liable to imprisonment for not less than six months.

If the act was committed during a period of mass disturbance it would assume a different aspect, and the offender would then be liable to the one sentence only, that is, death by shooting. It will readily be seen that strikS are a thing of the past in the Soviet. Not only has the w’orker his own trade union continually endeavouring to enforce the utmost industrial discipline on him, but he also knows that in each section of the undertaking there is a party cell, to say nothing of the fact that no Soviet citizen is sure whether his fellow worker, or lodger for that matter, is an N.K.V.D. agent or not.. This does not mean, however, that Soviet industry is free from all industrial worries, for workers individually risk the consequences of the laws and leave their place of employment or absent themselves from work in large numbers. 'This kind of passive resistance has given Soviet trade unions and authorities headaches for some considerable

time now, and appears likely to continue to do so for some time. So much so that legislation designed to eliminate such practices has been altered many times over a period of years, and in June, 1940, a special decree Ynade leaving the job an offence carrying two to four months’ imprisonment. For absenteeism a sentence of six months’ correctional labour was provided. Correctional labour entails the offender being confined to prison barracks and marched to and from work each day under armed guard, together with a 25 per cent, reduction in his wage rate. After 18 months’ trial of this law it was found necessary to deal more drastically with offenders, and a decree regarding all workers as mobilised was issued in December, 1941. Under this law a worker who left his place of employment was liable to a prison term of from five to 10 years. These severe provisions were not merely propaganda, and from reports published in the Soviet press there would be fair numbers of Soviet workers who are to-day serving such sentences in the U.S.S.R. It is, however, appeared that it did not have the desired effect, for in December, 1944, a special Government decree was issued under which all who had left their place of employment without permission or who were absentees and who returned to their former place of employment not later than February 15th, 1945, would be granted an amnesty. From reports published in the Moscow press and the campaign waged against absenteeism during 1945, the leniency offered by that special amnesty has not brought the results the authorities required.