UNIONS Under Khrushchev

...He cannot form a group with like-minded workers in his plant, or join with laborers in other establishments to press for a different policy...

...In the final analysis it is not the single, momentary improvement in the worker's living standards that is decisive, but whether he can forge an institutional weapon to defend, extend, and make improvement permanent...

...The trade unions have the task of publicizing the most efficient workers...

...He still carries a labor book and an internal passport, just as in the past, but he can—and does—quit his job without reprisals...

...But the girl in Kiev was producing 600 pieces a day...

...Different eyes, viewing the trade unions, can see in them either the vehicles to paradise or the instruments of hell...

...They are willing to consult more with individuals, to listen more, to permit more dissent...

...If he feels, for instance, that the rate of heavy industry growth should be less than that of light, he can do nothing to change it, except perhaps talk a little in his own department...

...After arguing the point for half an hour, he was told by one of our American unionists that Khrushchev himself had stated that Russian standards were lower than ours and would not catch up until 1970...

...But this is more than he was able to do in the past and indicates a desire at least to permit him to let off more steam...

...Clearly this is not possible—not only in Communist Russia but in the mixed economy of Sweden and increasingly so in capitalist countries...

...We resisted needling him on this score, but we wondered whether he learned this from "his own experiences...

...The "big stick" has been put away—at least for the time being...

...If there is to be freedom in the future, the unions should be in the forefront paving the way...

...Khrushchev today tries to reconcile the long-term and short-term goals...

...The result is that the major decisions affecting workers are made without labor's participation...

...When I pointed out to him that the Bolsheviks used to publish statistics on strikes in the 1920's, he argued that these were only against the private companies that operated during the period of the New Economic Policy...

...the other six were operating far more slowly...

...The transitional character of Khrushchev's Communism jumbles the past into the present in bewildering fashion...

...Why are they concerned with the plight of their people at all...

...Soviet unions have no right to strike...

...That is the significant point...

...They can attain a sense of continuity only by downgrading past evils and their association with them...

...The secret police can always be revived to play the terrorist role it played under Stalin...

...To understand the Soviet labor unions—as well as Soviet society itself —one must take into account two important features: f Despite its totalitarian character, Soviet society has an abstract—long-term—concern for its people...

...On a limited scale this is similar to the Yugoslav system...

...In public areas and inside the plants there are pictures of these men being honored and glorified...

...But there are two million unionists who serve without pay on the social security committees...

...Once the national plan is formulated the process is reversed and discussion goes down scale until it reaches the workers at the grass roots...

...Production is so clearly the fixed star of Soviet objective that the lines between labor and management are hopelessly blurred...

...At the Moskevitch auto plant 2,950 workers of a total of 14,000 were receiving some kind of schooling— and the union participated in the decision as to who should go, and how much of a subsidy he should receive, in every case...

...Each month the union assigns thirty-five workers to sanitoria and 120 to rest homes...

...Khrushchev himself had spoken of frame-ups in his Twentieth Congress speech, but Pimenov asked us: "Where did you get such information...

...Instead of terror there is now subtle pressure, plus consumer goods...

...The plant manager himself is now subject to a union veto...

...At the plant in Moscow which produces Moskevitch automobiles the major item of business at the meeting the previous day between the union and management had been the "chief engineer's report on automation...

...And it has always been America's proud boast that the more freedom a nation has, the greater is its strength...

...The pressure for freedom, said Harriman, "will make itself felt as the immediate demand for more material needs is met...

...It is a union commission that pays out social insurance, sick pay, maternity benefits, pensions...

...The unions organize what is called "socialist emulation...

...If they were totally free to strike they would have to match power with the government up to and including the point of general strike and revolution...

...During the days of civil war Lenin and Trotsky disagreed on whether the unions should play an independent role to protect the workers against "their own state," or whether, in the emergency, they should be completely subordinated to the state...

...In one plant the union committee told us it has just resolved a grievance on a matter of job classification...

...Of the eight factories we visited, expert unionists concluded that only two were working at a speed comparable to that of similar plants in the United States...

...It is a long process...

...It is the union that, together with the plant manager, decides who will get the new apartments and in what order...

...but the exact basis of the bonus is now determined by the local union committee...

...Inside the factories this emphasis is all too visible in thousands of placards that hang overhead and the signs on the bulletin boards: "Let's find more efficient methods so we can produce eight hours' work in our new seven-hour day...

...Are they...

...He is no longer afraid of being arrested for voicing an opinion or making a mistake in his job...

...The amounts run from one hundred per cent of the worker's wages, for the lower-paid, down to fifty-five per cent for the higher-paid...

...If it refuses to accept him, he cannot assume his post...

...And the union is the instrument for policing it...

...the manager was reprimanded and subsequently discharged for violating the law...

...In the shirt factory we visited the union officials demanded that a girl who left the shop during working hours to buy fruit, and who refused to work at a new machine, be discharged...

...The only trouble is—as usual—that the worker in the shop can do absolutely nothing about the total national plan...

...The trade unions deal directly with the state on all matters...

...This is still their basic role today— though there are some important changes in their operation...

...Competition between state enterprises—not only in price but quality and selling procedures—also unleashes healthy conflict and creates partially independent institutions, or at least institutions at the borderline of independence...

...But it is significant that the initiative came from the unions...

...And there are hundreds of cases where an employe takes his gripe to court over the head of his union...

...This year the work week is being reduced from forty-six to forty-one hours...

...A Leningrad union leader, L. B. Kotyura, boasted that the Soviet living standard was already higher than that of the United States...

...If you look for independent unions in Russia you won't find them...

...The other six million are farmers who work only in the off-season, temporary workers, or floaters...

...The preoccupation with production is pervasive...

...Or consider the matter of hours and working conditions...

...A Soviet Union that was made free would be much more attractive not only to underdeveloped countries, but to liberal segments in our society as well—particularly if we were to go through another decade of stagnation and world-wide retrogression, as we did in the 1950's...

...The union supervises children's camps, rest homes, sanitoria, and some educational facilities...

...Averell Harriman, in a recent book on Russia, made a prediction with which I whole-heartedly agree, and which is already becoming at least a faint reality...

...It is, after all, the same people who carried out the Stalinist practices who are now veering sharply away from them...

...The planning commission assigns a certain sum to each plant to be paid out in bonuses...

...Organized by the Bolsheviks as an instrument of "class struggle" against Tsarism they became a pivotal institution of the new state once power was seized...

...The rank-and-file worker can only suggest changes in his own factory plan...

...Not all of these men and women are terrorized into assuming these functions, nor do they necessarily gain material benefits from them...

...By 1962 it will be forty hours a week, and, starting with 1964, it is scheduled to drop to thirty-six...

...Under the 1958 decree, bonus payments, formerly decided at the top level in Moscow, are now somewhat decentralized...

...But once Stalin's monolith was firmly established the trade unions became a satellite force completely dominated by the Communist Party...

...While in Kiev we watched a girl in a shoe factory putting tacks on the heel of a last...

...It not only conducts special schools of its own but helps assign workers to institutes where they can improve their skills and be upgraded to better jobs...

...The standard American explanation that Soviet workers are forced into the unions is not entirely true...

...On another occasion, in talking with Peter Pimenov, an official of the international affairs department, we were amazed to hear him deny that there had ever been purges in Russia...

...But will they...

...There are millions more in other commissions...

...An economic bureau may work out the national plan, but it is the party in the background that sets the goals...

...No one can say with absolute accuracy...

...But to deny that there is a possibility of such change is to flout the law of history...

...In July 1958 a new decree was passed: the local factory committee was assigned a place in formulating the economic plan...

...Today he is merely reprimanded or discharged, just as in capitalist countries...

...Under Stalin, as under Khrushchev, there were means, of a sort, of expressing dissatisfaction— letting off steam...

...Any autonomy they might have enjoyed was taken away...

...the output of a union girl in Chicago is between 1,500 and 2,000...

...If they had to contest directly the great power of the state itself they could not survive...

...This too does not conform to our pre-conceived image of a "driven" people...

...Two employees - who had been classified in a lower labor grade than they were entitled to were given a ten per cent wage increase and two years' back pay...

...The July 1958 code gave the local union the final say in all discharge cases...

...If there are tickets to the Bolshoi Theater they go to the workers with the best work record...

...It is not nearly so extensive as, say, in our United Auto Workers...

...Looking at it from the other side, why do Russian workers join such unions...

...Such developments would be almost as crucial for the United States as for Russia...

...Individuals may dissent from this or that facet of the Soviet way of life...

...The Soviet worker depends on his union for almost all his social and cultural benefits—housing, maternity grants, sick pay, pensions, sports, entertainment, in-plant meals, low-cost vacations, adult education...

...all threads of power intermesh with the party...

...More likely when there is a dispute of this kind it goes up to higher Communist Party councils for resolution...

...In Tashkent, in central Asia, we observed a conference of 1,200 "superior workers," each bedecked with medals and ribbons...

...Yet as Premier Nikita Khrushchev increasingly appeases the desires of his people for consumer goods—to an extent unheard of in Stalin's times— the demand for freedom, slow to generate and even slower to take institutional form, becomes more and more visible...

...The press, like the unions, is controlled by the Communist Party...

...As the national product grows larger and living conditions improve, the pressures for further relaxation of controls and more prerogatives must continue...

...In my opinion the evidence of Yugoslavia and Poland shows the contrary...

...Five minutes later, while we were discussing the fact that Western newspapers could not be bought in Moscow, he argued that Russian papers could not be bought in New York either...

...f There is a complete absence of countervailing power in the Soviet Union...

...The question of how to improve living standards is answered by each Soviet leader in his own way...

...The press, the employers association, the farmers, the government, the political parties, all join in affecting the decision...

...Thus bonus payments may vary from plant to plant...

...Their main function, clearly, is to increase production...

...They are an instrument of conflict that matches economic power with a limited entrepreneurial force...

...Will the Soviet economic breakthrough be followed by a political breakthrough—towards institutionalized democracy...

...Freedom, in any degree, in the land of the Soviets, is a concept few Americans would consider possible...

...Can they...

...They have no place under either feudalism or collectivism...

...But the fact that the union is given such a prerogative indicates a growing concern to make the organization a living organism rather than a docile appendage...

...Certainly at this point there is no fear of revolt...

...A miner is paid even more...

...The day may not be too far off in Russia where basic decisions are genuinely debated in public instead of handed down from above...

...A decade ago if he were late or absent so many times a month he could be sentenced to jail...

...At what point the unions might emerge as a real countervailing force no one knows...

...In the cutting room the pace of operations was perhaps eighty per cent that of the American...

...In a so-called proletarian society labor unions should be the main instrument of countervailing power...

...The workers in one factory are urged to compete with those in similar plants to see which group can exceed its production plan most...

...So long as he gives two weeks' notice and gets a new job quickly, he carries his vacation and pension rights to his new factory...

...It is then discussed by workers in their departments and sent up the ladder to the regional economic development councils...

...I doubt very much that it works quite this way...

...Conversations like this cast doubts on the Soviet liberalization process...

...They are completely subordinate to the Communist Party...

...Comparing them with American or British labor organizations is like comparing tomatoes with refrigerators...

...A particular annoyance was the rigid and distorted language of some of the spokesmen...

...But they will not tolerate an independent or semi-independent institution...

...Unions, as we understand them, can exist only under a capitalist system...

...The plant director boasted she did not take the union's advice because all the employe's fellow-workers marched in a body to her office and asked that the girl be given another chance...

...Compulsion, in varying degrees at varying times, has certainly played a role...

...If a degree of democracy should be possible in the Soviet Union, it would come from an agglomeration of pressures, mounting until it blended into an institutional form of dissent...

...As explained by Soloviev, the factory plan is drawn up by the unions and management...

...The decentralization of power by the Titoists has led to frequent disputes between the Yugoslav "republics...

...The Communist Party, which could do the job itself if it had to, prefers to stay in the background, exercising its controls through the unions...

...This question of countervailing power is the key not only to Russia's past and present, but its future...

...The devil theory of a "slave society" is too facile...

...It is difficult to understand at first why the Soviets go to the trouble of organizing unions at all...

...Of the fifty-nine million workers, fifty-three million carry union cards...

...it is certainly a departure from the Stalinist system...

...But if you try to establish the direction in which they are traveling you can see traces of potential independence tomorrow...

...Unions sometimes ask their directors to fire a worker because he is not productive enough...

...At a shirt factory the discussion pivoted around "socialist competition" with similar plants...

...They change with the times, just as does the Communist Party itself...

...You should stick to what you have seen or heard yourselves...

...A medical doctor may be paid $120 a month, while a heavy industry worker will receive as much as $200...

...The union's social welfare work is a veritable empire...

...Such a decision is made at the top of the Soviet hierarchy...

...According to the leader of a Chicago shoe workers' union, the automatic machine she used was identical with those back home, as was the task itself...

...In the scale of Soviet values production ranks high...

...No such strike had ever taken place, he said...

...But it does translate itself into more prerogatives both for the union and for the individual worker...

...If he wants to place his children in a summer camp he gets accommodations through the union in his shop...

...The curator of an art museum earns less than many workers...

...Since the trade unions are not an instrument of conflict, as they are under capitalism, the state must assign some function to them to make them attractive to the workers...

...So is the thesis popularized by George Meany and other American labor leaders that Soviet trade unions are "company unions...

...At each level the trade union committee participates...

...They make "free and frank" exchange of views difficult...

...The shifting character of the Soviet trade unions is a reflection of this basic problem...

...The whole wage system is geared to encourage industrial production...

...The union is also responsible for the commissaries, canteens, and special stores...

...But none of it yesterday could find an institutional outlet, nor can it today...

...They believe that the Communist Party, rather than the people, must guide the economic destiny of the nation...

...But they may not organize their dissent into structural form...

...In all the factories we visited I asked union officials to tell us what took place at their last meeting with the plant director...

...It may be, as some scholars believe, that such a transformation is impossible under Communism...

...A worker who does not join the union loses benefits many times as great as the one per cent of his wages he pays in dues...

...Probably the most heartening feature of the present transition is the fact that there is a growing emphasis on grievances...

...It is actually his only insurance...

...Increasingly the Khrushchev regime has tried to involve the unions in more decision-making...

...The worker was first called before a "comrades' court" of his fellow-workers, and when he refused to appear was discharged...

...But there are now thousands of instances where a work norm is challenged or where a discharged worker is reinstated...

...These benefits are not inconsequential...

...As a practical matter, then, he can hardly exist without the good will of his labor union...

...But in Russia there is no pluralism...

...Only when there are enough goods available to appease the mass appetite and when there is enough education so that countervailing forces can group into mass organizations—only then does democracy emerge...

...His articles have appeared in many American publications, including the Yale Review, the Harvard Business Quarterly, The New Republic, and Liberation.— The Editors...

...Though they sometimes speak of overthrowing capitalism, their day-to-day activity consists merely of modifying capitalism—winning better wages, shorter hours...

...Under the present liberalization of Soviet life and the loosening of Communist Party domination the unions too enjoy a slight measure of autonomy...

...In a society where everything is manipulated from the top down, how and when will independently organized pressures be generated from the bottom up...

...A tally sheet is kept on the bulletin boards and written up in the local plant papers as if the competition were a football game...

...So is the plant director, the ministry, the collective farm organizations, and everything else...

...At the same plant, for instance, there are four kindergartens for children...

...Democracy has come to no country overnight —not even to the United States...

...The director of a large textile mill, employing 15,300 workers, was also a member of the top union committee...

...The Soviet citizen may yet have a say in whether The Plan emphasizes heavy industry or consumer goods, or whether education shall be for eight years or ten years or twelve years, or whether heavy industry workers should receive more pay than white collar employes or doctors...

...But even under this liberalized policy the Communists are unwilling to permit the unions to act as a genuine countervailing power...

...There is a club room with a seating capacity of 600, a drama club, two orchestras, a brass jazz band, a ballet group, a photography society, one football team for the whole plant and one in each shop...

...There must be some political outlet for resolving disputes that paralyze the economy...

...Pensions, for instance, begin at age sixty for men and fifty-five for women...

...There are fishing, hunting, motorcycle racing, auto racing, and other sports groups...

...To incur its wrath is to cut himself off from benefits in every area: housing, social insurance, sports, culture...

...He is not pressured into "voluntary overtime"—working on special projects without pay...

...If he should die the union administers the special payments to his wife...

...It administers the reading rooms and libraries, organizes theater and cinema parties, and social affairs, forms sports clubs of a dozen different kinds, subsidizes orchestras and jazz bands...

...Until the Trotsky and Buk-harin factions were liquidated in 1929, the unions retained some degree of independence, as evidenced by the fairly substantial number of strikes during that era...

...The individual worker can relax more under present circumstances...

...If he is hurt on the job the union handles his wage payments until he is better...

...Lens is the author of several books, including The Crisis of American Labor, and The Counterfeit Revolution...

...Unions are a limited institution for gaining limited ends from a single employer or a group of employers...

...Leonid Soloviev, a national leader, insisted that there never had been any strikes in Russia—not even one...

...Social insurance costs for 1960 will run about $7 billion...

...If there is an apartment to be assigned, the union and the plant director consider the most productive worker first...

...in the stitching room, only seventy per cent...

...they may not appeal to public opinion...

...Lens, who recently returned from a swing through the Soviet Union in the company of nine other American trade union officials...

...A democratic or partially-democratic Russia would pose a challenge to the United States considerably different from that of present-day Russia...

...When "accommodation tickets" are doled out for low-cost vacations the choice falls to those laborers who have done best in production...

...Properly speaking, then, the Russian trade unions are not unions at all...

...At another factory the union asked that a repairman be fired because he refused to carry out the directives of his foreman...

...Everything is secondary to production...

...That is what labor faces in the Soviet Union...

...And it is the party that makes certain the unions explain these objectives to the workers and spur them on to reach them...

...The unions played an important role in the revolution of 1917...

...Production of heavy goods is still his major economic preoccupation, but consumer goods are assigned a much more prominent place...

...It is a transitional type of Communism, neither dogmatic and orthodox, nor revisionist and flexible...

...The top-down, total-rule of the Communist Party is considered the only means for satisfying mass needs...

...Why then does the state improve housing, cut hours, increase the availability of consumer goods...

...Yet, in perspective, it seems that this stance of infallibility by so many Russian leaders in so many fields is a defense mechanism rooted in their own past...

...Harriman's words carry a special significance for the Soviet trade unions...

...When I asked him about a certain strike in Kazakhstan which had been discussed by a local political figure and mentioned in a local Russian newspaper, he dismissed the story as a "typical lie" of the "bourgeois press...

...The case went to court and the judge held with the union...

...Comrades, struggle for leadership in meeting the 1960 plan...

...There it is modified, summarized into the regional and national framework, and sent up to the central planning organization in Moscow...

...As Soloviev explained this procedure it sounded most impressive...

...In one plant we were told of a director who fired a worker even though the plant committee wanted him kept...

...There were many aspects of the Soviet trade unions that irritated me during my intensive study of them in Russia this past summer...

...Khrushchev's "revisionism" is therefore a "half-revisionism...

...To say that the Russian unions are "company unions" therefore hardly provides a full picture...

...Why doesn't the Communist Party itself police production...

...One can only wonder: Why in a "slave society" do the masters shorten the hours of labor...

...Faced with this "irrefutable evidence," Kotyura conceded the point...

...Let's improve labor discipline...

...In the trade union movement "half-revisionism" does not permit institutional independence...

...They became a beltline between the party and the workers, assigned to the task of increasing production...

...Stalin decided that it was necessary first to build a basic industry, and if that meant cutting wages or postponing new dwellings, he felt that such "short-run" sacrifices were necessary for the long-term interests...

...That function, now being considerably enlarged, is social welfare...

...In Sweden there is delicate machinery for solving such problems through democratic discussion and all kinds of countervailing pressures...

...There is a Communist Party nucleus in each shop, each office, each government bureau...

...Invariably we were told that the first item on the agenda had been production—how to meet "the plan" or exceed it...

...You could not have learned it from your own experiences...