The Changes in Soviet 'Trade Unions'
RUBLE, BLAIR A.
DISGRUNTLED WORKERS The Changes in Soviet 'Trade Unions ,by bair a ruble VLADIMIR KLEBANOV In the winter of 1978 Vladimir Klebanov—a disgruntled coal miner and shift foreman from the Donbass...
...Each had come to talk to Supreme Soviet deputies about problems they felt had been ignored or improperly handled by local union, Party and state representatives...
...Indeed, there is a risk that they will attach greater importance to their new role than most senior Party officials would like...
...Shibaev, listed a half-dozen measures to improve job performances and included among them efforts to create a "healthy moral-psychological climate...
...Akopova in a 1964 work...
...Moreover, this has allowed the unions to advocate measures that benefit workers, yet are not antithetical to an expansion of Soviet economic capabilities...
...Another letter from forestry workers in Komsomol'sk-on-Amur complained of inadequate housing and plant conditions that result in 50 per cent of the employees leaving annually...
...Although no fully accurate information is available, he believes that the yearly total of workers pursuing these courses could be as high as one in five...
...The roots of the first trend date to the 1944 appointment of Vasily V. Kuznetsov as the chairman of the Ail-Union Central Council of Trade Blair A. Ruble, a new contributor to The New Leader, is currently the principal researcher for the Kennan Institute's Soviet Research Project...
...That, at any rate, is what British political scientist Alex Pravda concludes in a recent study...
...In sum: The crude and brutal methods used to raise industrial output in the Stalinist period have been gradually replaced by more sophisticated ones...
...No doubt many of the changes that have taken place have been inspired by calculated and cynical motives...
...So, taking matters into their own hands, they drafted a letter of protest that was signed by 72 workers from 42 cities...
...The document was hardly revolutionary: It did not alter the subordination of union to Party, nor did it eliminate the emphasis on increased productivity...
...DISGRUNTLED WORKERS The Changes in Soviet 'Trade Unions ,by bair a ruble VLADIMIR KLEBANOV In the winter of 1978 Vladimir Klebanov—a disgruntled coal miner and shift foreman from the Donbass region—met several other unhappy workers in the reception rooms of the Kremlin...
...It was not possible for the general line of the restriction of democracy not to have negative influences upon the participation of the unions in State and in economic construction, in the management of industry...
...34 wrote that the air in and around their plant is saturated with sawdust, yet factory management consistently refuses to do anything about the ventilation system...
...He concluded that only a "favorable psychological atmosphere" could improve productivity, and called for the upgrading of dining facilities, transporation, and housing...
...Finally, Soviet workers have been complaining more loudly about management than in the past...
...The authorities quickly clamped down: Several of the dissidents were arrested for violating Moscow residency laws...
...These investigations persuaded not merely legal scholars, but political leaders as well that violations such as truancy were, in fact, responses to inadequate services available to Soviet workers...
...In providing a channel for union advocacy, the Party establishes closely supervised outlets for whatever discontent may exist within the Soviet population...
...For example, in a major policy address, the current chairman of the AUCCTU, A.I...
...To appreciate this point more fully, one need merely look at the letters from Soviet workers appearing even in the controlled union daily newspaper, Trund(Labor...
...In turn, union concern with the work environment and with related issues became legitimate, and even desirable...
...This was reflected in a speech last year by A. Viktorov, one of 10 AUCCTU secretaries, to a meeting of the USSR Supreme Soviet...
...Perhaps most importantly, his speech contained the most overt public references to date on the wide disparity in social services between workers in light and heavy industry...
...It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Soviet trade unions are increasingly pushing for social improvements...
...in the Ministry of Coal Production, the figures were 44 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively...
...Because there is not supposed to be any antagonism between workers and management in a classless society, independent expression of worker discontent is not tolerated...
...They remain government-controlled, of course, and continue to promote the interests of the regime —but they have also begun to speak, within prescribed limits, for the workers...
...A December 1957 Central Committee resolution extended this to the political arena...
...In April 1956, shortly after Nikita S. Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin before the Twentieth Party Congress, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet removed the criminal sanctions against absenteeism and truancy that had been erected in 1938-40...
...How they are resolved will play a large role in determining the future character of Soviet society and of its political system...
...In a 1978 article appearing in the Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo (Soviet State and Law), the Armenian legal scholar I.A...
...Unions (AUCCTU...
...On March 24,1978, to pick a recent issue at random, one group of laborers from Onega Sawmill and Wood Processing Combine No...
...Nevertheless, changes have been taking place in Soviet labor relations since the end of the Stalin era, and among the most important of these has been a more active role for the trade unions...
...and being executors of official Party policy, their primary goal is to up productivity...
...In addition, Viktorov observed with some dismay, that capital funds set aside to improve factory cafeterias had gone unspent...
...The Viktorov speech is one small indication that this may even be happening, particularly when it is viewed within the context of the performances of past union leaders...
...Second, the view that workers need outlets for their frustrations has gained wide acceptance in recent years...
...Meanwhile, the ties binding a worker to his job began changing, too...
...Consequently, union leaders—despite their being agents of the state—must to some extent respond to the workers they represent...
...It has since been more generally maintained that there is a direct relationship between improving working conditions and productivity...
...This led to a more or less free labor market...
...Kuznetsov (currently vice president of the USSR) also convened the Tenth Trade Union Congress in April 1949—the first national gathering of union leaders in over 17 years...
...These have engendered new problems—possibily new tensions between workers and their managers, possibly conflicts within the trade unions themselves (i.e., between union officials responsive to worker demands and those on the higher level of the bureaucracy who are not...
...Arabian summarized his data concerning labor discipline violations in his That overall sotsial 'nyi kli-mat, and not "bourgeois" influence, is seen as the major cause of labor indiscipline is a significant departure from past Soviet theory and practice...
...The situation at the time of his accession was described by E.M...
...This was released to Western journalists in the hope that the authorities might be made to respond to world pressure, and Klebanov announced the formation of a free Soviet trade union that he would seek to have recognized by the International Labor Organization (ILO), a United Nations agency...
...But it did give unions the confidence to address social and economic matters, and it urged party officials in the factories not to ignore their union colleagues...
...In other words, a decade of Stalinist purges had virtually decimated the unions...
...By the time he left his position to become a deputy foreign minister, immediately following Stalin's death in 1953, the unions had acquired a solid insitutional base for expanding their activities...
...Similarly, "trade unions" belong not to their members but to the State...
...Many union leaders have been echoing this view...
...With wages remaining under central control, factory managers started offering the hope of better living standards and working conditions in order to lure scarce skilled labor...
...scholars like V.I...
...Nonetheless, the evolving position of Soviet trade unions also testifies to the genuine pressure workers have been putting on their representatives...
...He noted that some ministries were not spending the funds made available to them for the improvement of factory housing and child-care facilities...
...Yet, once again, they had found their grievances falling on deaf ears...
...The significance of the protests may vary considerably (appearing drunk on the job cannot be equated with holding a press conference for western journalists), but their number emphasizes that it is becoming hard to control the Soviet worker...
...Similarly, by allowing union claims vis-a-vis management, the Party creates another check on management—a check it can easily monitor...
...Three trends have contributed to this development...
...This episode illustrates certain immutable features of the Soviet approach to labor relations...
...Besides letter-writing, Pravda uncovers a rich tapestry of activity that includes worker turnovers, discipline violations, and collective protests such as industrial actions, public demonstrations and open dissent...
...Many individual unions were consolidated, and several defunct branches of the labor apparatus, such as regional councils, were resurrected...
...By bringing up these allocation procedures, Viktorov raised potentially embarrassing questions about privilege distribution in the USSR...
...soon after the transferral to the trade unions of the functions of the People's Commisariat of Labor [in 1933] . . . there began in the country a deviation from the Leninist norm of Party and State life called the 'Cult of the Personality of Stalin,' bringing about a considerable restriction of democracy...
...Specifically, he cited two cases: In the Ministry of Machine Tool Production, a scant 26 per cent of the money provided for housing and 17 per cent of the sum for child care was spent during the first 10 months of 1978...
...Klebanov himself, the New York Times reported last month, has been held in a mental institution...
...Under Kuznetsov's chairmanship, the AUCCTU took steps to revitalize the unions so that they could parti-cipitate in the huge post-War reconstruction effort...
...Kikitinsky of the Institute for Soviet Legislation began to use sociological methods to explore why the norms of labor discipline were accepted by some and rejected by others...
...And the published letters are probably just the most visible expression of disenchantment...
...By the mid-1960s, several legal native republic...
...To begin with, the Communist Party itself has been providing greater institutional and rhetorical support for trade union activities...
...After some largely pro forma statements about industrial productivity and technological innovation, he directed the attention of his audience to several failures on the social front...
Vol. 62 • April 1979 • No. 9
