WORLD

Perestroika and the

“Soviet workers: The Soviet w
atmosphere and Is slowly, ilk
motion.

ass has been arou
e an unlimbering giant, swinging itself into

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sed by the new

Fred Weir

MOSCOW -- Until recently per-
estroika, the Soviet restructuring,
has seemed largely a phenomenon
that was unfolding through rapid
changes in the intellectual, cultural
and political environment of Soviet
society. But it is now beginning to
reach down deeper, and laws coming
into effect at the start of 1988 man-
date sweeping and fundamental
changes in the very production rela-
tions that have governed the Soviet
economy for more than half a cen-
tury. Already there are signs that the
vast -- and until now quiescent --
Soviet working class has been
aroused by the new atmosphere and is
slowly, like an unlimbering giant,
swinging itself into motion.

One could not ask for a sharper or
clearer illustration of this than that
provided by a relatively trivial labour
dispute that erupted in the city of
Yaroslavl, some 300 miles north of
Moscow, in mid-December, and for
one brief moment threatened to run
out of control. What happened, and
how it was dealt with will, in all like-
lihood, serveas a pattern for events to
come and it shows, in high profile,
both the potential and the perils that
attend the entry of the working class,
notas a slogan invoked by others, but
as a real, living force in the per-
estroika drive.

The Autodisel Production Asso-
ciation in Yaroslavl is a huge con-

From Moscow

we

cern, made up of numerous intercon-
nected factories, foundries and work-
shops, that employs almost 40,000
people. It produces diesel engines,
which it supplies to some 300 other
important enterprises in the USSR.
It’s strategic position in the Soviet
economy, and the scale of its produc-
tion, have put it among the first major
enterprises to be placed on the
hozraschot system of full cost-ac-
counting and self-management.

Enter the working class

When the planned production tar-
gets for 1988 had been worked out,
management, headed by the plant’s
director, Vitaly Doletsky, drew up a
work timetable for the coming year.
Every employee in the plant works a
basic weekly shift of 41 hours. But in
order to accommodate the hectic pro-
duction schedule, breakdowns, dis-
ruptions in supply, and so on, man-
agement has always preferred to di-
vide the time up, shortening the regu-
lar working days and adding a number
of working Saturdays -- the workers
call them ‘Dirty Saturdays’’-- in the
year. This insures management for
those frenetic moments, usually at the
end of each month, when a major
effort has to be made to meet planned
production quotas (the workers call it
“*storming the plan’’).

In 1986 there were 21 ‘‘Dirty Sat-

urdays’* at the Yaroslav] works; in
1987 there were 19 of them.
Management’s projected timetable
for 1988 envisaged 15 working Satur-
days.

“Dirty Saturdays”’

In accordance with all the rules,

management submitted its proposed”

timetable for 1988 to the plant’s trade
union committee which, without
much discussion or probing the feel-
ing on the shop floor, approved it. As

the newspaper Sotsialisticheskaya
later pointed out, there”

Indusria
seemed no reason for anybody to
expect any objections as ‘‘in the past
the timetable used to be endorsed as
Management considered neces-

sary”’.

However, when the new timetable |
was announced in the plant’s 600 dif- ~

ferent sections, work units and de-

partments, something totally unfore-—

seen happened.
It ran into stiff opposition.

A workers’ protest

In small section meetings workers

took the floor to argue against the
practice of working Saturdays, and _
the trade union committee received a _
barrage of urgent and angry letters.
Workers were obviously beginning to ©
Say openly things they had only

thought about in the past.

““Why should we give our Satur- —

days to patch up gaping holes in the
organization of production?’’, one
worker told TASS reporters. ‘‘We
are sick and tired of idleness during
the week and frenzy on the week-
end’’.

INTERNATIONAL FOCUS

Tom Morris

The emperor

has clothes

Well, it figures.

It pays to have 35 pairs of Gucci
loafers in your closet. It pays to
spend more on clothing in one year
than the average Canadian family
spends on food.

Because of his attention to
wardrobe detail. and a rich man’s
budget, Brian Mulroney has finally
made the Big Time.

Never mind your Nobel Prize
for peace, literature, science,
medicine or the like. Forget about
public recognition for music or art.

Mulroney has scaled the real
heights.

He’s joined with such lumi-

naries as Arnold Schwarzenegger -

and Ronald Reagan as one of the
world’s Best Dressed Men.

The news will certainly be
E hailed in Africa, Latin America
and Asia where 3,000 children
under five die each hour from hun-
ger and disease.

It should go over big on the
freezing streets of any Canadian
city where people are meeting the
winter by lining up for shelter and
food handouts, some sleeping on
heating grates and under -stair-
wells. With these scenes, does this
planet need one more strutting
peacock? -

Some say that clothes make the
man.

In Mulroney’s case it must be
true because little else is evident.

Another name
for murder

Our well-dressed leader, has told
the world Israel is ‘‘acting with re-
straint’ in the occupied Arab terri-
tories.

Some 24 young Palestinians have
been shot dead in the past three
weeks. More than 1,000 arrested;
some to be deported. Young girls

m

and boys are being beaten with clubs
and lashed with whips. They are
being tortured while in custody and
tied to the front of Israeli army ve-
hicles.

Palestinian homes are being
raided, people dragged out of their
beds in front of terrified children.
Troops saturate the streets with tear
gas and armour.

Every nation looks on in revul-
sion; the UN Security Council con-
demns the deportations.

And what ofour simple Boy from
Baie Comeau?

What does our coiffured Prime
Minister have to say?

Se

og

Palestinian women protesting arrests, depo

He speaks of ‘‘restraint’’. He
says Israel is in ‘‘a difficult posi-
tion’’. He purrs and coos and bats
his eyelids.

He should spend a few hours tied
to the front of an Israeli truck or be
forced to lie face down for 24 hours
and beaten every time he moves.

He should watch his sons de-
ported for fighting for their dignity

racks, these realities are another
world.

stand up for the brave Palestinian
people, Mulroney at least should
have the decency to keep quiet.

True daughter
of the Empire

If he can’t find the honesty to

Since this seems a week to salute

ations and terror raids by Israeli occupying troops.

and their people.

He should see his wife shot to
death in the yard of her home by a
rampaging occupying army.

For a man preoccupied with
walk-in closets and meters of shoe

Prime Ministers, I suppose we
should give a tip of the hat to Maggie
Thatcher for achieving the status as
the longest serving (reigning?) Brit-
ish Prime Minister in this century.

Acknowledging this fact last
weekend, Thatcher said she had
turned Britain around economically
since her right-wing economic poli-
cies were introduced in 1979,

Well, she’s turned part of Britain
around.

Like her pal Reagan, Thatcher
has actually made the rich richerand
the poor poorer, widening the gap
between the haves and have-nots.

Like the motley old tion on the
crown, she’s also a quaint anachro-
nism of past Empire glories: steam-
ing off to the Falklands, defending
apartheid and sinking billions into
Britain’s military clout -- not to

speak of her not-so-benign pursuit ~

of Imperial interests in Northern
Ireland.

She’s a true daughter of
England’s upper classes.

8 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 13, 1988