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V. SMIRNOV

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Considerable changes have
taken place among machine op-
erators. While the total number
of workers in this group had
grown from 759,000 in 1954 to
1,222,000 in 1962, their percent-
age only increased by 0.5 per-
cent. Moreover, their percentage
of industrial workers generally
remained stable, 6 percent in
both 1959 and 1962.

The reason is that in this per-
iod a great deal of automatic:
machinery has been_ installed,
permitting a worker to operate
several machines. In many fac-
tories automatic assembly lines
were installed and the machine
operator became an adjuster or
master of both trades. In this
case, mechanization and auto-
mation has resulted in the emer-
gence of multi-machine opera-
tion and the combination of
trades.

In recent years building and
transport operations have also
been subject to intensive mecha-
nization and automation. Earth
digging and loading and unload-
ing of bricks, sand, timber and
reinforced concrete structural
materials used to be among the
most labor-consuming and un-
skilled jobs in the building in-
dustry. The growth of the num-
ber of building machines and
the mechanization of the build-
ing industry resulted in a sub-
stantial decrease in the number
of workers employed in heavy
manual work. Between 1959 and
1962 they dropped from 2.5 to
1.9 percent, and the number of
transport workers dropped from
10 to 6 percent, while the per-
cent of machinists rose from 4.1
to 6.

The wholesale transfer of rail
transport from steam to electric

Top photo shows workers in the May Day shoe factory in Riga,
Latvia. The entire production process in the plant has been mecha-
nized, Bottom: Worker at the control board in the Kalinin coal-dress-
ing plant in Donetsk, Ukraine. All production processes in this plant

are automated and mechanized.

and oil has led to substantial
changes in the categories of
workers. There has been a steady

* decrease in steam engine drivers

and firemen.
As a result of over-all mecha-
nization and automation of in-

dustry, the functions of the
workers increasingly become
those of technicians connected
with the operation of intricate
machines and mechanisms.

It is accompanied by a growth
in the percentage of skilled la-

Italy, USSR sign pact
coexistence in practice

By BERT WHYTE
Tribune Staff Correspondent

MOSCOW

OW a policy of peaceful co-

existence between states

with differing social sys-
tems can be beneficial to both
is illustrated in a joint commu-
nique issued here following the
Official visit to this country of
Amintore Fanfani, Italy's minis-
ter of foreign affairs.

The Soviet-ltalian communi-
que said the two sides “reaffirm
their concern over the situation
in Vietnam in which they see &
serious danger to the cause of
peace.”

They agreed on the need to
prevent the spread of nuclear
weapons, to gradually cease
producing them and, in the long
run, to destroy these weapons.

Both sides noted with satis-
faction “the highly promising

development of economic and
trade relations between the two
countries.” The Fiat automobile
plant on the Volga is under con-
struction and-plans are in the
offing for building a gas pipeline
to deliver Soviet natural gas to
Italy. Talks on a sea-borne trade
agreement between the USSR
and Italy are proceeding satis-
factorily, and talks on extending
cooperation in air service will
open soon.

The foreign ministers of the
two countries signed 2 consular
convention, an agreement on
tourism, and initialed the text
of a pact on cooperation in agri-
cultural research. ~

For five decades Soviet diplo-
macy has followed a policy of
peaceful coexistence. The Decree
on Peace was the first foreign
policy ‘pronouncement of the
Soviet government following the
October Revolution.

Even during the dark days of
the Civil War and foreign inter-
vention the Soviet government
sought to establish normal con-
tacts with capitalist countries.
To skeptics who thought such
policy was unrealistic, Lenin
said: “There is a force more
powerful than the wishes, the
will and the decisions of any
of the governments or classes
that are hostile to us. That force
js general world economic con-
ditions, which compel them to
make contact wtih us.”

An interesting footnote is that
the first international confer-
ence in which Soviet Russia par-
ticipated was held in Italy. At
the Genoa Conference 45 years
ago Soviet Russia signed an
agreement with Germany which
Lenin characterized as the first
international pact embodying
“true equality of the two prop-
erty systems.”

jobs

bor. The socialist state is inter-
ested in a constant rise of the
people’s cultural and technical
standards. Workers are trained -
at vocational schools set up
directly in the factories. In 1954
technical schools were organized
to train junior technicians and
skilled workers. In 1962 these
schools were graduating 117,000
students, up from 14,000 in 1954,

Most of the skilled workers
have been trained in the facto-
ries. On the average more than
2.6 million new workers a year
are trained in various skills and
some. 5 million old workers im-
prove their skills. .

The factory, mill and mine are
to the Soviet workers not only
places ‘of’ work but technical
colleges as well. In this respect,
the enterprise performs the use-
ful social function of training
and educating members of the
new society.

The number of skilled workers
in Soviet industry in 1959 was
51.7 percent as compared to 40.5
percent in 1927 and 49.6 per-
cent in 1950 while the number
of semi-skilled in those same
years was 46.4, 34.1, and 47.9
percent. The number of unskill-"
ed dropped from 25.4 percent in
1927 to 2.5 percent in 1950 and
a mere 1.9 percent in 1959.

It is interesting to compare
this with the U-S. figures that
in 1960 there were 13.2 percent,
unskilled 36.0 percent skilled
and 50.8 percent of semi-skilled
workers.

The rise in the Soviet workers’
standards of skill has been close-
ly tied with the growth of gener-
al culture and education. The
percentage of workers with less
than seven years of schooling
has been declining while the
percentage of workers with se-
condary and higher education
has been rising. Workers with
incomplete or complete secon-

‘dary or higher education, for

example, constituted 8.2 percent
of the total labor force in 1939,
38.6 percent in 1959 and 42 per-
cent at the beginning of 1963.

Socialist relations enable the
workers, with the spread of
automation, to change their
trades or combine several trades,
to acquire a second or third spe-
cialty. This is one of the social
consequences of technical pro-
gress in the USSR.

In all industries combination
of trades calls for more techni-
cal knowledge on the part of
the workers. Over-all mechaniza-
tion and automation has made it
possible to transfer many of the
workers’ functions to machines.
This is the reason why with the
formation of multi-trade workers
the role of their individual pro-
duction experience declines,
while their function of regulat-
ing and controlling the techno-
logical process is broadened.

All this provides the basis for
the ending of the essential dif-
ferences between mental and
physical labor.

June 2, 1967—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9