(a) Organized co-operation;
(b) Individual personal service;
(c) Individual special jobs.
It will be observed that this subjection to labor conscription applies to “all citizens” except for certain exempted classes. Women, therefore, are equally liable with men, except for a stated period before and after childbirth. It will also be observed that apparently a great deal of control is exercised by the trades-unions. We must bear in mind, however, at every point, that the trades-unions in Soviet Russia are not free and autonomous organs of the working-class. A free trades-union—that is, a trades-union wholly autonomous and independent of government control, does not exist in Russia. The actual status of Russian trades-unions is set forth in the resolution adopted at the ninth Congress of the Russian Communist Party, in March, 1920, which provides, that “All decisions of the All-Russian Central Soviet of Trades-Unions concerning the conditions and organization of labor are obligatory for all trades-unions and the members of the Communist Party who are employed in them, and can be canceled only by the Central Committee of the Party.” The hierarchy of the Communist Party is supreme, the trades-unions, the co-operatives, and the Soviet Government itself being subordinate to it.
Article II deals with the manner in which the compulsion to labor is to be enforced. Paragraph 16 of this article provides that “the assignment of wage-earners to work shall be carried out through the Departments of Labor Distribution.” Paragraph 24 reads as follows: “An unemployed person has no right to refuse an offer of work at his vocation, provided the working conditions conform with the standards fixed by the respective tariff regulations, or in the absence of the same by the trades-unions.” Paragraphs 27 to 30, inclusive, show the extraordinary power of the Departments of Labor Distribution over the workers:
27. Whenever workers are required for work outside of their district, a roll-call of the unemployed registered in the Department of Labor Distribution shall take place, to ascertain who are willing to go; if a sufficient number of such should not be found, the Department of Labor Distribution shall assign the lacking number from among the unemployed in the order of their registration, provided that those who have dependents must not be given preference before single persons.
28. If in the Departments of Labor Distribution, within the limits of the district, there be no workmen meeting the requirements, the District Exchange Bureau has the right, upon agreement with the respective trades-union, to send unemployed of another class approaching as nearly as possible the trade required.
29. An unemployed person who is offered work outside his vocation shall be obliged to accept it, on the understanding, if he so wishes, that this be only temporary, until he receives work at his vocation.
30. A wage-earner who is working outside his specialty, and who has stated his wish that this be only temporary, shall retain his place on the register on the Department of Labor Distribution until he gets work at his vocation.
It is quite clear from the foregoing that the Department of Labor Distribution can arbitrarily compel a worker to leave a job satisfying to him or her and to accept another job and remain at it until given permission to leave. The worker may be compelled by this power to leave a desirable job and take up a different line of work, or even to move to some other locality. It is hardly possible to imagine a device more effective in liquidating personal grudges or effecting political pressure. One has only to face the facts of life squarely in order to recognize the potentiality for evil embodied in this system. What is there to prevent the Soviet official removing the “agitator,” the political opponent, for “the good of the party”? What man wants his sister or daughter to be subject to the menace of such power in the hands of unscrupulous officials? There is not the slightest evidence in the record of Bolshevism so far as it has been tried in Russia to warrant the assumption that only saints will ever hold office in the Departments of Labor Distribution.
Article V governs the withdrawal of wage-earners from jobs which do not satisfy them. Paragraph 51 of this article clearly provides that a worker can only be permitted to resign if his reasons are approved by what is described as the “respective organ of workmen’s self-government.” Paragraph 52 provides that if the resignation is not approved by this authority “the wage-earner must remain at work, but may appeal from the decision of the committee to the respective professional unions.” Provision is made for fixing the remuneration of labor by governmental authority. Article VI, Paragraph 55, provides that “the remuneration of wage-earners for work in enterprises, establishments, and institutions employing paid labor ... shall be fixed by tariffs worked out for each kind of labor.” Paragraph 57 provides that “in working out the tariff rates and determining the standard remuneration rates, all the wage-earners of a trade shall be divided into groups and categories and a definite standard of remuneration shall be fixed for each of them.” Paragraph 58 provides that “the standard of remuneration fixed by the tariff rates must be at least sufficient to cover the minimum living expenses as determined by the People’s Commissariat of Labor for each district of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic.” Paragraph 60 provides that “the remuneration of each wage-earner shall be determined by his classification in a definite group and category.” Paragraph 61, with an additional note, explains the method of thus classifying wage-earners. “Valuation commissions” are established by the “professional organizations” and their procedure is absolutely determined by the local Soviet official called the Commissariat of Labor. If a worker receives more than the standard remuneration fixed, “irrespective of the pretext and form under which it might be offered and whether it be paid in only one or in several places of employment”—Paragraph 65—the excess amount so received may be deducted from his next wages, according to Paragraph 68.
The amount of work to be performed each day is arbitrarily assigned. Thus, Article VIII, Paragraph 114, provides that “every wage-earner must during a normal working-day and under normal working conditions perform the standard amount of work fixed for the category and group in which he is enrolled.” According to Paragraph 118 of the same article, “a wage-earner systematically producing less than the fixed standard may be transferred by decision of the proper valuation commission to other work in the same group and category, or to a lower group or category, with a corresponding reduction of wages.” If it is judged that his failure to maintain the normal output is due to lack of good faith and to negligence, he may be discharged without notice.
An appendix to Section 80 provides that every wage-earner must carry a labor booklet. The following description of this booklet shows how thoroughly registered and controlled labor is in Sovdepia:
1. Every citizen of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, upon assignment to a definite group and category (Section 62 of the present Code), shall receive, free of charge, a labor booklet.
Note. The form of the labor booklets shall be worked out by the People’s Commissariat of Labor.
2. Each wage-earner, on entering the employment of an enterprise, establishment, or institution employing paid labor, shall present his labor booklet to the management thereof, and on entering the employment of a private individual—to the latter.
Note. A copy of the labor booklet shall be kept by the management of the enterprise, establishment, institution, or private individual by whom the wage-earner is employed.
3. All work performed by a wage-earner during the normal working-day as well as piece-work or overtime work, and all payments received by him as a wage-earner (remuneration in money or in kind, subsidies from the unemployment and hospital funds), must be entered in his labor booklet.
Note. In the labor booklet must also be entered the leaves of absence and sick-leave of the wage-earner, as well as the fines imposed on him during and on account of his work.
4. Each entry in the labor booklet must be dated and signed by the person making the entry, and also by the wage-earner (if the latter is literate), who thereby certifies the correctness of the entry.
5. The labor booklet shall contain:
(a) The name, surname, and date of birth of the wage-earner;
(b) The name and address of the trades-union of which the wage-earner is a member;
(c) The group and category to which the wage-earner has been assigned by the valuation commission.
6. Upon the discharge of a wage-earner, his labor booklet shall under no circumstances be withheld from him. Whenever an old booklet is replaced by a new one, the former shall be left in possession of the wage-earner.
7. In case a wage-earner loses his labor booklet, he shall be provided with a new one into which shall be copied all the entries of the lost booklet; in such a case a fee determined by the rules of internal management may be charged to the wage-earner for the new booklet.
8. A wage-earner must present his labor booklet upon the request:
(a) Of the managers of the enterprise, establishment, or institution where he is employed;
(b) Of the Department of Labor Distribution;
(c) Of the trades union;
(d) Of the officials of workmen’s control and of labor protection;
(e) Of the insurance offices or institutions acting as such.
A wireless message from Moscow, dated February 11, 1920, referring to the actual introduction of these labor booklets, says:
The decree on the establishment of work-books is in course of realization at Moscow and Petrograd. The book has 32 pages in it, containing, besides particulars as to the holder’s civil status, information on the following points:
Persons dependent on the holder, degree of capacity for work, place where employed, pay allowanced or pension, food-cards received, and so forth. One of these books should be handed over to all citizens not less than 16 years old. It constitutes the proof that the holder is doing his share of productive work. The introduction of the work-book will make it possible for us to ascertain whether the law as to work is being observed by citizens. This being the object, it will only be handed to workmen and employees in accordance with the lists of the business concerns in which they are working, to artisans who can produce a regular certificate of their registration as being sick or a certificate from the branches of the Public Welfare Administration, and to women who are engaged in keeping house, and who produce a certificate by the House Committee. When the distribution has been completed, all sick persons, not possessed of work-books, will be sent to their work by the branch of the Labor Distribution Administration.
(a) The name, surname, and date of birth of the wage-earner;
(b) The name and address of the trades-union of which the wage-earner is a member;
(c) The group and category to which the wage-earner has been assigned by the valuation commission.