The Soviet miner works a 30-hour week, is eligible for retirement at 45,
and enjoys vacation and rest homes provided virtually free.

Who are the ‘dissidents’?

By WILLIAM POMEROY

LONDON — Unable to dig up
any more “dissident poets’’ or
“‘dissident scientists’ in the
Soviet Union, professional anti-
Soviet circles in, Britain have now
discovered ‘‘dissident Soviet
workers.”

Ever since the big ‘‘dissident’’
operation was launched by the
CIA and its related intelligence
agencies in the other NATO
countries, its directors have been
embarrassed by the fact that they
could not find any Soviet indus-
trial or agricultural workers to
bribe or to seduce into posing as
“dissidents.’’ They think they
have remedied this glaring pro-
paganda shortcoming by finally
unearthing a handful of
unemployables whom they have
formed into a ‘‘dissident trade
union.”

On March 2 the British section
of Amnesty International claimed
to have received documents from
a newly-formed so-called ‘‘As-
sociation of Free Trade Union
Workers in the USSR,” which
the British Guardian, one of the
most avid promoters of such
causes, declares ‘‘show for the
first time the extraordinary extent
to which the USSR has been
harassing and imprisoning ordi-
nary working folk for complaining
about their jobs.”’

Just ‘Humble folk’

According to the “documents,”
the new ‘‘trade union’’ is
composed of about 200 people
who met each other while making
complaints in government offices
in Moscow. They are referred to

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as unemployed ‘farmworkers,
miners, nurses, engineers and
other relatively humble people,”’
no two of. whom come from the
same enterprise, and are from
localities scattered from the Uk-
raine to Vladivostok. -

The anti-Soviet propagandists
who have come up with this crea-
tion apparently have no idea of
the nature of a trade union and
how it operates. How individuals
from diverse occupations and
sections of industry separated by
thousands of miles could function
as a trade union staggers the im-
agination of anyone but an anti-
Sovieteer.

This is not stopping Britain’s
Amnesty International from br-
inging the case to the Inter-
national Labor - Organization
(ILO) for official recognition as a
case of ‘‘trade union rights.”’ It
has not stopped Labor MP Eric
Heffer, a left-wing Laborite witha
strong anti-Soviet bias, from cal-
ling on the British Trades Union
Congress to ‘‘sympathetically
concern itself with these workers’
efforts.’ Said Heffer: ‘‘If it is
right to uphold trade union rights
in Chile and in South Africa, then
it is also right to support those in
the Soviet Union who also want
free and independent trade
unions.”’

Incidentally, Heffer also urged
the Labor Party recently to en-
courage ‘‘Eurocommunist’’
trends because they embody an
opportunity to win West Euro-
pean Communist Parties over to
social democracy.

A number of those being pub-

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it is not compulsory for a Soviet worker to belong to his trade union.

But in addition to determining wages and working conditions for all

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—May 5, 1978—Page 8

licized as organizers of the new
“trade union’’ in the Soviet
Union claim that they lost their
jobs and were imprisoned for
complaining about working con-
ditions or abuses by factory man-
agers. Others have spent time in
mental homes. One, a former
miner, complains that he lost his
job because he protested against
faulty mine safety measures and
against overtime.

Perhaps this latest anti-Soviet
concoction will provide an oppor-
tunity for the truth to be told, by
those who can refute the pro-
paganda, about Soviet trade
unions and their role as one of the
main pillars of socialist democ-
racy and about the conditions in
Soviet industry.

Right to Work

First of all, under a Soviet Con-
stitution that makes the right to
work a legal right, and with fac-
tory managers unable to fire a
worker without trade union per-
mission, it is virtually impossible
to dismiss a worker without
highly legitimate and obvious
cause. It is certainly illegal to
dismiss a worker for merely mak-
ing a justified complaint. It is con-
ceivable that, if after investigation
it is found that the complaint is
malicious and if this is repeated, a
trade union may agree to the
dismissal of a worker who thus
harms relations and production in
a factory. :

Thave attended a court trial of a
young worker in Moscow who
committed a petty crime, a first
offense. His trade union spoke for

him in court and requested that
instead of being sent to a refor-
matory, the worker be turned
over to the trade union for super-
vision and correction in his plant;
this was agreed to. by the judge
and people’s assessors. This case
was far more typical than those of
the malcontents being eulogized
by Amnesty International.

Unions are Basic Institutions

Soviet trade unions, far from
being the ‘‘state-run’’ tools for
“labor discipline’ that the cur-
rent campaign tries to make them
out to be, are the basic institutions
of democracy in the socialist
system.

They are the main bodies for
planning, organizing and carrying
out production in a plant and in an
industry. As to factory condi-
tions, they are shaped by the fact
that the trade unions initiate, for-
mulate and see to the enactment
of the Soviet labor laws and labor
codes.

It is the Soviet trade unions that
assess the work performance of
workers, distribute the bonuses
accordingly, build and manage
the workers’ sanitoriums and rest
homes, build and run the im-

mense array of sports facilities of

plants, build and distribute
housing, operate the Young
Pioneer camps for workers’ chil-
dren, provide and run the nursery
facilities for infants of workers,
erect and manage the workers’
palaces of culture, and carry on a
host of other responsibilities and
activities that give enormous
benefits to Soviet workers that
are literally unknown to those
under capitalism.

. Furthermore, it is not compul-
sory for a worker to belong to a
trade union; although this may
hinder his taking advantage of
facilities run by the union, non-

workers, the union builds and manages vacation and rest homes, chil-
dren’s camps, daycares, cafeterias and cultural and sports facilities.

.

membership has nothing to 40
with his enjoyment of the samé

wages, bonuses and _ working
conditions of his fellow workers:

The Best Answer
As far as the publicized single
Soviet ‘‘dissident’’ miner is com:

cerned, the British miners’ unio?

delegation that visited the Soviet
Union last year, and came back
with glowing praise for the safety
measures, working conditions;
30-hour week, low retirement
age, virtually free rest homes am
other benefits enjoyed by Soviet
miners, will give the best answe
to people like Eric Heffer.

The British Guardian says of

the new-found ‘‘dissidents’” wh

have nursed grievances together
in Moscow complaint depart-
ments: ‘‘Obviously some of the
people: who turn up at those
rooms must be cranks, barrack
room lawyers, and many may

well need genuine psychiatric.

help.” Nevertheless, this doesn't
stop the Guardian and the ant
Sovieteering Amnesty Intel
national from converting such
types into ‘‘worker dissident
heroes.

One of the giveaways of this
latest anti-Soviet operation is that
the ‘‘cranks’’ have immediately
rushed to hold ‘‘press confef
ences’’ with journalists in Mos:
cow from capitalist countries and
have made an ‘appeal to the
West”’ for defence of their ‘‘tradé
union rights.” Workers in J.P.
Stevens will be especially impre-

ssed by this, while President Cat

ter may be expected to turn from
his ‘‘defence’’ of the rights of
U.S. coal miners and their unio®
to uphold the human rights of s0”
cial misfits who can’t hold ajob1#
the Soviet Union.

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