NO SPEEDUP AND NO LAYOFFS How USSR uses automation John Stewart, editor of the Canadian Tribune, now melding a tour of the Sovie Ciés, reports on automation ; By JOHN I On the train back from the Wag tO ask Whi hin also as usual, didn’t stop for a moment. q : 3 thr & was a miner, he explained Bi eeeth’s holiday, not to the in © Lenin ra area, es cae for my pension at 50— sto ago — put I couldn't Ms Working.” ; muen he produced his pay book by pone in terms of average ‘te he’s doing very well. Pension “* 1,500 rubles a month ay Whe In addition he makes Working up-to 2,500 a month . re giving him a_hand- Month OMe of 4,000 rubles a Boog, Verage which is fact a here, considering the Btayy at it’s practically all ig fa me of ‘how back in a 1. - the mine was reopen- Carry; Y8S an ordinary miner one out what he mined on Britis, ¢ Some American and help the eineers came over to dette €m put the mine on a Wag Sine oauction basis and he 0h, eed out for an advanced ) : i fact that he had to vsin ame an engineer without he sai Ny What it was all about,” Soo, “th a big smile. en pa owever, the manage- : for Im to an engineering ® : two years — which Mining often tougher than. he ly Cle meident zave:me a vivid- ot this ure of how the work- teap ho oentty are beginning i strug 1° fruits of long years rouge for socialist power 2d cig devastating hot wars Ps Ww us Years of cold war . . Ore ee nee to them is much ai h ga & Political slogan. “avy ;,, “sited two plants of tog at aa — the auto fac- the ang th » Named after Molo- ae town € steel plant at the ing oth ae Rustavi in Georgia. : ® the vine one can see how detent €adership of the gov- ed Droge _ the Communist wtb ection is being speed- iy a themen’ benefit of the dey Dita); elves, and not, as “Sinentt Countries, to their by qd ar f. Pay Tom i ~ let t aityone being fear ORs ag qussion by the trade tek * how best and how 4p. Sentral committee on ( emi ‘ i | rit Orde, Ue? Bulganin said: : a Progrec.. SPeed up tech- S in our country it 0 : | on “gh my interpreter, and was) t Union and the Peoples’ Demo- in the Soviet Union. — STEWART MOSCOW auto city of Gorki to Moscow, chile” standing outside my room chatting with my ‘‘perivos- (interpreter), when a man tapped me on the shoulder fora match. I obliged and he began talking to me. Usual T had to give my reply ‘‘ni panimayu pa Ruski’’— fect machinery and the teehnol- ogy of production, to carry through complex mechanization ‘and automation of production and quickly to introduce into production the achievements of Soviet and world science and technique.” In the Gorki auto plant, M. F. Plotnikov, vice-director, pointed out a new Soviet-designed ma- chine which, he said, had dis- placed 50 to 60 workers. The workers themselves had a hand in its designing. There were many other new machines. I saw a young girl (very pretty too) operating a complicated valve-producing ma- chine. She displaced 16 workers when it went into operation. And because it’s classed as “hot work” her work day is only six hours. Whole motor blocks are now made automatically; a new sys- tem electrically welds the body assembly in four seconds — all except the fenders. Yet N. A. Bulganin singled out this plant for some sharp critic- ism for producing too many oth- er things and not enough cars. (Production is now about 1,000 cars and trucks daily.) From what I know about pro- duction in Canadian plants I would say the pace of production is slower here — which is why the government is putting on the drive for automation. There'll be no speedup of workers in these plants; the main idea behind automation is to produce more cars faster in order to raise the living standards of the workers and give them more leisure time for culture. Yowll find all that in’ Bul- ganin’s speech and you'll hear it from the trade union leaders at Gorki and from the workers on the assembly line. Looking through the plant, one has to remember that the first autos produced in the USSR: were produced here as recently _jas 1932 — aided by engineers from the Ford plant in Detroit but handicapped by lack of ex- perienced workers. More than half the plant was destroyed by Nazi bombs in the guarantee, Second World War — so in fact} the auto industry here is only| now getting on its feet. Today, Plotnikov said, they were far from being satisfied with old ones. Coming off the assembly line soon will be the new Volga, complete with automatic trans- mission and looking, the director agreed, like a cross between a Pobeida and Chevrolet. But Canadian autoworkers, will be interested to know that there is no layoff here for re- tooling at this plant. The new Volga won’t displace the old Pobeida or the Zim for a while yet; the new assembly will be set up parallel with the old as the plant expands. The Gorki auto union is a powerful organization that ex- ercises considerable control over all aspects of production, pro- cessing all grievances with man- agement, discussing production schedules, having full authority over safety, negotiating wages and hours contracts every year and carrying out all the usual functions of a Canadian union — with one notable and vital dif- ference. It also carries out a truly tre- mendous program of housing, va- cations, cultural centres, ‘health care, pensions, creches, camps for children in summer (one of which ‘I visited for an unforgettable ex- | perience) — and a dozen and JOHN STEWART REPORTS 60,000-mile As compared with new ears in Canada, th against all defects for as The Gorki plant pr in the Buick class. The plant director are very popular, owners rep with no more than usual wear. They don’t use souped up Ordinary gas does th of the other chemica and down, in traffic and out. the 4,000-mile, 90-day guarantee on e Gorki auto plant guarantees its cars high as 90,000 miles. oduces the big Zim, a six-cylinder car It gets the penan ate guarantee. The i -mile é fa NE Ney it rape ba Finland; where Pobeidas ort up to 100,000 miles of travel e trick, without additives, TCP, or any Is that shine so brightly in. Canadian line advertising. Here it’ austell lead. And these cars have plenty of speed and power, as I’ve found in covering a lot of miles in them, up hill guarantee MOSCOW gasoline in the Soviet Union. s just plain gasoline, without old Soviet Pobeida and the new Chevrolet. one other functions. Dues payments are about one percent of the workers’ pay. The plant employs 42,000 workers, and about 80 percent have join- methods of production — theyjed the union. There is no need were building and planning new|for a “closed shop” here. I had occasion to visit some of the workers’ housing, dropping into two apartments (flats they call them here) picked out at random. In one very neat flat lived a pensioner’s family of three peo- ple. For the three rooms, plus kitchen, bathroom and hall, they paid 36 rubles a month. The pen- sioner received 1,500 rubles a month; their son 600 — “so I really don’t need to work,” said the wife, in her mid-sixties. And of course, there are never any medical expenses to be paid out of this income, which is why, I said before, it is practically all gravy. No tax deductions, no insurance to pay, no doctor bills . . . and no worry about rent, mortgage payments, vacations or layoffs. The city of Gorki, on the Vol- ga River, named after its most famous son, Maxim Gorky, the great Russian writer, is becom- ing a place of great beauty. It too, is an ancient town with a great walled Kremlin on the hill (now being restored). It is build- ing magnificent new parks and cultural centres and already the park along the Volga rivals in beauty our own Niagara Falls park area. : What you feel in Gorki most is that it is a working class city —run by and for the workers. They’re in full command, as, of course they are in all cities. But somehow, I felt it more strongly in this auto city which is twice as big as Windsor. and Oshawa put together. At the Rustavi steel mill, it was much the same story, ex- cept that Rustavi is a new post- war city. I’m no expert on methods of steel production, but this new plant (the whole town and plant | were built on arid wasteland, now transformed into a_ beauti- ful new city) is the latest thing in automation. I walked through what seemed like miles of it, and saw so few workers around that I had to question the figure given to me of 8,500 workers on They’re mighty good cars. S Constantly to per- three shifts. ? The new Soviet Volga, equipped with automatic transmission, looks like a cross between the But General Motors doesn’t offer a _ 60,000-mile The plant produces 600,000 tons of steel and 800,000 tons of pig iron per pear and is still expanding capacity. Everything is done automatically, controlled by great panels and switches. It was quite a sight to see both men and women move mol- ten steel from the furnaces through the blooming mill, while sitting quite comfortably in glassed-in control rooms. I could see very little heavy labor being done anywhere and thought it was something new to see al- most aS many women aS men as “‘steelworkers.” Before long the whole plant will be air coriditioned. Here again the steel union ex- ercises full control over all working conditions. But as at Gorki, and the tex- tile plant at Barnaul, there’s no opposing interest between man- agement and the union. They are both out to achieve the same things; and a part of the profit goes back to the union for its social welfare program. It can be expressed in what the director told men about safe- ty. “A director can be dismissed if there are accidents,” he said. This is a socialist industry, owned, operated and controlled by the workers, for the workers. I confess it takes a little getting used to, and many of my ques- tions were quite puzzling to workers—or brought loud laugh- ter. Here also, I visited the new | apartments, and when I suggested to Vladimir Kervolidze, a steel- worker, that his flat seemed a bit small for his wife and two children, he replied: ae “Perhaps. But as soon as we have enough homes like this for everyone then we'll build them bigger.” : In both Gorki and Rustavi, I found a strong desire by both the union leaders and manage- ment to receive delegations of Canadian auto and steel workers —and to send Soviet workers to Canadian plants. Mikhail Maximov, president of the Gorki auto union, asked me to send greetings to the 30,000 Canadian autoworkers. “It would be a good idea to ex- change delegations,” he told me. “It would be an opportunity to strengthen good relations be- tween the autoworkers of Canada and the Soviet Union.” PACIFIC TRIBUNE — SEPTEMBER 16, 1955 — PAGE 3 eat mnt eae a temic haa cas ol ip hiss suiin tu haa dics eae, Uh ks Mace unio EMRE AAC ma ei”