SOVIET INDUSTRY

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3182, 26 May 1932, Page 7

SOVIET INDUSTRY

COLLAPSE OF LABOUR DISCIPLINE.

In connection with the radical revision of all economic and administrative organisations in the Soviet Union, central departments in Moscow appear to be vying with each other in describing the abnormal conditions and abuses prevalent in their subordinate establishments, which hitherto have been described in official reports as functioning in an exemplary manner (writes a correspondent from Riga).

There appears to have been general failure of the one-man management system decreed over a year ago. Reports of the last few days, especially fli'om the heavy industries and nonferrous metal industries, describe conditions at large-scale enterprises as chaotic. Labour discipline has become bad, and in many works the workers are so out of hand that even Communist directors are unable to enforce authority.

Orjonikidze, Commisar for Heavy Industry, and Kaganovlch, Third Secretary of the Communist party, went to Nizhni Novgorod personally to find out why the new motor-car works there could not begin regular work. They discovered great disorder. Twenty-five thousand workmen had been on the pay roll since January, but most sections were unable to work owing to the lack of some vital apparatus or materials, and the whole work was held up by what the Communiist for Heavy Industry calls "a rotten chain of weaknesses." The Commissariat adds that similar failures have recently become apparent in many other important sections. There have been seven different directors of the Konstantinovka Zinc Works in the course of a year, but the works are now in a state of chaos, and are obliged temporarily to close. One of the chief reasons given for the failure is that directors and technical specialists are terrorised by the undisciplined rank and file, and not given the proper; support by party organs.

The loss on the Konstanainovka works is reckoned at 10,000,000 roubles (nominally about £1,000,000).