The second Congress of Vocational Unions holds that all insurance business, its functions, the institutions of the People’s Commissariat of Social Insurance, affecting the workers, must be amalgamated into the common work of the Department of Social Insurance and Labor Safeguard of the People’s Commissariat of Labor.
Having discussed the question of interrelations between the Commissariat of Public Health and the Department of Social Insurance and Labor Safeguards of the People’s Commissariat of Labor, the second All-Russian Congress of Vocational Unions resolved to accept the following principles as a basis for the solution of the question:
1. Social insurance and labor safeguarding being a complete and logically united institution, with the dictatorship of the proletariat in power, when the entire population of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic is being transformed into laborers, covers the activities of Commissariat of Health, thus representing under the circumstances one of the most important and most necessary links of one chain.
2. It is possible to carry into life the measures of social insurance and labor safeguards with the necessary system and on a vast scale, only if the work is done in the closest connection and intimate touch with the masses that are interested in it, and on the condition that the masses cooperate most energetically.
3. The union of any group of functions into one whole may be determined exclusively by their proximity and similarity, else there is a possibility of the least efficient combination of all or any individual branches of government activity, to the detriment of the regular development and direction of the same and to the certain amount of independence so necessary to each and every one of the activities.
4. The medico-prophylactic activity, like the entire institution for social insurance and labor safeguards, must be united, i.e., both the organizing and organic work is concentrated in the hands of bodies and institutions specially created for that purpose, and depending from the same common central body. As regards the necessary differentiation of labor it must be carried out exclusively within the common bodies, but under no circumstances must it be done by means of tearing away from them of any of the parts closely bound through common problems and peculiarities of the work, no matter how considerable each of them, taken apart, might be.
In view of the above principles, the Congress resolves that:
1. The Commissariat of Public Health must be amalgamated with the Department of Social Insurance and Labor Safeguards.
2. All organs of social insurance and labor safeguards must be built from top to bottom entirely on the basis of vocational unions’ representation.
3. The question of the order of uniting the Commissariat of Public Health with the Department of Social Insurance and Labor Safeguards of the People’s Commissariat of Labor is given over to the Central Executive Committee for consideration.