"Barbarous Soviet Russia"

by Isaac McBride

WAGE AND WORK REGULATION

(Resolution introduced in connection with V. Schmidt’s report)

Observing a great variety and lack of coordination of the tariff (wage scale) regulations which hamper not only the standardization of labor, but their practical materialization, and explaining such an abnormal phenomenon in this matter by the presence of a number of glaring defects, (absence of a definite system of wages, which would serve as a basis of the tariff regulations, the elasticity of groups and categories, the elimination from these regulations of the salaries of the higher technical, commercial and administrative personnel), defects due to the rapid transition from one form of wage scale regulation to another; due to the weakness of the local unions and their local separatism, and, finally, the inconsistency (instability) of the local organs of governments in regard to the wage regulation policy, the Second All-Russian Congress of Vocational Unions deems it necessary to introduce the following amendments and additions to the wage regulations:

1. The basic principle of wage scale regulation, in connection with the struggle for the restoration of the country’s economic forces, must be the responsibility of the laborers and other employees for the productivity of labor before their union, and the responsibility of the latter before the class associations of the proletariat. For this purpose the wage scale regulations must be based on the system of compensation of labor power which would serve as an incentive for the laborers to outdo each other in their desire to raise the productivity of labor in the nationalized enterprises, i.e. the piece-work and premium system founded on a rock-bottom standard of production, with a firmly fixed schedule of either increased pay or decreased hours of work in compensation for production above the standard requirements.

In those branches of industry where it is impossible to standardize the work, a scale of wages is to be applied on the basis of the time employed with definite hours of work and strict working regulations.

2. The wage scale of the industrial union is to include the higher technical, commercial and administrative personnel, whose salaries are to be subject to the control of the union. In accordance with this, the tariff regulation is to be divided into three fundamental parts; (a) the higher technical, commercial, and administrative personnel; (b) the lower technical and administrative personnel; the employees of the managements, the offices, institutions and commercial establishments, and (c) the laborers.

3. In order to eliminate too large a number of groups and categories (five groups and 15 categories) and to insure a fair compensation of the basic nucleus of the workers and other employees occupied in the industries, a subdivision into four groups and 12 categories is fixed for each of the three ranks (the higher personnel, the lower staff, the workers), the ratio of the higher wage to the lower within the limits of each one of the four given groups, from the first category to the 12th, is 1:1.75.

4. The wage scale regulations for individual groups of the workers and for certain branches of industry or parts thereof, must contain provisions either for the shortening of hours, or for the increase of pay as compensation for particularly harmful, dangerous, difficult or exhaustive labor, and in connection with climatic conditions.

5. Clothing and footwear is to be distributed to the workers engaged in the wood chopping industry, the sewerage and street cleaning industry, or occupied in underground work, work at a particularly high temperature, or necessitating the handling of harmful chemicals. Particularly difficult and harmful work (such as, underground work, the peat gathering industry, the preparation of wood fuel, work at a high temperature, work with poisonous gases and acids exhausting the system) should carry with it a home and a higher wage. This latter measure is to be carried out by the All-Russian and local councils of the Vocational Unions. In order to put these additions and amendments to the wage scale regulations into actual life and in order to do away with the obnoxious multiformity the Congress resolves:

To recognize the wage scale regulation which is being carried out on a national scale and which affects all the workers and employees of a given industry, from the highest administrator down to the skilled laborer,—as the one which best answers the fundamental needs of standardizing the wages.

To grant to the All-Russian Central Committee of the Industrial Unions the exclusive right to finally work out the wage scale regulations and to submit them for approval of the All-Russian Central Council of Professional Unions and to the People’s Commissariat of Labor.

To deprive the local branches of the All-Russian centralized unions of the right to directly submit their wage scale for approval over the head of their central body, so long as an All-Russian industrial wage scale is in operation.

To leave to the local Soviets (councils) of the Vocational Unions the right to fix the wage scale regulations only for the local unions, which have no All-Russian association, using the wage scale regulations in force as a guide; under no circumstances changing the regulations passed on a national scale. Besides, it is the duty of the local Soviets of the Vocational Unions to coordinate individual scales in different industries while putting them into practice, and the right to present a grounded petition for the transfer of a given locality into another district in accordance with the proportional (percentage) scale of district decrease of wages.

The Congress approves of the work of the committee and the section on the construction of wage scale regulations and recommends to the All-Russian centralized industrial unions to accept them as a basis. The Congress authorizes the All-Russian Central Council of Vocational Unions to carry out this resolution strictly and without any deviations.