LABOR Efficiency up, boredom down MOSCOW — If you tell a Canadian worker that her job is to be taken over by a robot, she will not be very happy. The first thought that will come to mind is that she will soon join the vast army of unemployed. But it isn’t that way in the Soviet Union. Here, the introduc- tion of a robot means the elim- ination of monotonous and tire- some work, and better, more interesting jobs for the workers directly concerned. Take, for example, the Analit- pribor factory in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev which produces optical instruments. In the last three years, this plant bas in- stalled 40 robots and it is planned to introduce 65 more by the end of 1985. __ Most of these robots have been designed to eliminate boring, re- petitive jobs in the pressworking and assembly shops. Vasily Zabolotny, director, explained it _ this way in a recent statement: “Our industrial enterprise, like any other here, introduces robots only when the workers replaced by them will be given other jobs. This is required by the Constitu- tion, which guarantees the right to work. Moreover, the new job should not be worse in its es- _ Sence, earnings and labor condi- tions. This is strictly observed by the trade union committee.’ Galina Martinenko, a 36-year- old worker in the plant, is one of Robots no threat From Moscow Jack Phillips those who, with some of her workmates, was replaced by a robot, and she is happy about the change. She was a stamper and had to repeat the same monoton- ous and boring movements. Now, she and her friends are doing a job in the same plant that requires higher qualifications, and her earnings have risen by 35 per cent. Robots in this plant have been combined with digital control tools, thus eliminating a situation in which the robot got too far ahead of the worker and had to be switched off from time to time. Now the workers adjust and con- trol the operation, and one worker attends to five or six such complexes. Seventy-eight workers in this plant are taking courses to up- grade themselves. Also, because of the increase in the number of engineers and designers brought about by the introduction of the new processes, workers receive diplomas and new jobs in the de- sign, mechanization and automa- tion departments, while their working places are being taken over by robots. “have In the Soviet Union as a whole, the number of robots and man- ipulators will reach 40,000 by the end of 1985, with the emphasis on quality. There will be robots cap- able of performing several dif- ferent operations, and robot con- trollers with TV eyes. - The overall objectives are not confined to the elimination of bor- ing, arduous work. The improvements in technology are also seen as a means of overcom- ing a chronic labor shortage, caused mainly by the effects of World War Two, insuring a grea- ter and better supply of consumer goods for the public, extending social programs, and strengthening the economy as a whole. the campus. not been settled. protection. pay for work of equal value. a Ryerson staff out for first contract TORONTO — Support staff at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute hit the bricks at midnight Jan. 2 in a bid to win a first contract. The Ontario Public Service Employees Union represents 500 secreta- rial, food service, library workers, janitorial and bookstore staffon The local received a strike mandate on Dec. 7, but after an ail day and night bargaining session Jan. 2, several key issues had OPSEU is after job security for its members, an issue threatened by management's insistence on retaining the right to contract out work. On the lines are the jobs of the food service workers. Ryer- son is one of the few universities in Ontario to have its own in-house food service, and fears are that the administration is planning to contract the service out to an outside corporation. Other issues include seniority rights for temporary employees, union members having first crack at job posting, retraining pro- visions in. case of technological change, and health and safety Management has also levelled a flat “no” to demands for equal Hunt hits ‘economic malaise’ REGINA— ‘‘Governments in Regina and Ottawa appear to accepted growing unemployment as a fact of life,” Saskatchewan Federation of Labor president Nadine Hunt charged in a New Year’s message last week. ‘‘Real wages continue to decline as governments fight inflation on the backs of the work- ing people and employers chip away at the rights and living stan- dards of the workers. ‘‘Fears about job security mount as working men and women face the uncertainties of an economy in transformation and technological change. The economic malaise in Saskatch- ewan,” Hunt said, ‘‘is increasing pressure on our social services and educational system. Unfor- tunately, governments are re- sponding to the challenge by cut- ting spending in these critical areas. The result is an alarming increase in social upheaval and lost opportunities for a generation of young people,”’ the SFL presi- dent said. Hunt’s message spoke of ‘‘renewed strength through unity”’ in the past year and “new alliances’’ formed by the labor movement with other progressive groups. 66,000-member SFL ‘‘will build on those strengths in the coming year and work together for social and economic justice.” She promised the. Writing ‘thit ‘Twas five years less three months ago when I wrote my first Labor In Action column for the Tribune, and _ here, some two hundred and fifty columns later, 1 am writing my last. In between it’s been an interesting and rewarding task. Communist writers have a very special responsibility. We're not writing for money. Nor are we writing for fame Or just to see our ideas in print. We seek to agitate work- ing people to strengthen their united struggles in defence of their interests; to educate them to understand the pos- sibility of transforming society, and to come to know their power and learn how to use it. The science of Com- munist journalism has always been that of harmonizing the immediate needs and interests of the people with the need for fundamental social change. There can be no and has never been any unbridgeable gulf between people’s endless quest for immediate eco- nomic and social justice, for reforms in their favor, and the -revolutionary transformation of society. All that differs is the distance between one and the other. - In the five years that this column has blossomed, the gap between the reformist illusions that still largely char- acterize Canadian working people, and the pressing need for fundamental change in our country, has closed signif- icantly. hs A process of maturing is evident in the working class. their levels of struggle, though uneven, are rising. Their level of comprehension is growing. They are addressing the pressing need for unity in a serious and urgent _ fashion. They are likewise beginning the most difficult _| process of shaping a new militant, class-based leadership to head up the critical tasks before them. _ I would suggest that our family of papers — the Cana- dian Tribune, the Pacific Tribune, Combat and the youth magazine Rebel Youth — and this column as part of it all, have played some role in this process. Of course, I would not want to deny the major share of responsibility for this _ transformation to the system of monopoly capitalism. It is the increasingly obvious failure of the system to meet _ the people’s expectations that is pushing them to seek an alternative. ; At the same time it would be a long wait indeed if people were sentenced to cogitate the answers. to their “| growing problems in solitary seclusion. Monks have been | working on this proposition for endless ages. Labor in action : q William Stewart Our contribution lies in our capacity to help working people understand both the nature of their problems and the way to solve them. They are learning day by day something which Marx, Engels and Lenin patiently explained to previous generations of workers. Practice is. barren without theory, just as theory is sterile without practice. Taken together, they provide the working class with a matchless weapon in its struggles against exploita- tion and war. It isn’t enough to say it, though. It is necessary to tie theory and practice together as intimately as Siamese twins. This is indeed the art of revolutionary leadership. And it is indeed also the art of revolutionary journalism. Lenin noted in his writing that workers are attracted to working class theory like bees to honey. This, of course, should not be taken to mean that they automatically respond favorably. Not at all. But they do respond, and sometimes negatively. That merely sets the argument. The worst sin is not to lose an argument to a worker who may think of himself as an anticommunist — it is not to engage in the argument in the-first place. Workers’ acceptance of anti-communism is based large- - ly on their sound opposition to capitalism and all it stands for. The propaganda of the capitalist press has managed in some degree to turn reality around make it appear that we have civil liberties here — but there are none in the socialist countries. ..we have all the conditions for the maturing of man and culture here, but the socialist countries don’t. ..we are for peace, but the socialist coun- tries are for war. ..at least so the propaganda goes. Anti-communism is based on a tissue of lies, and it is precisely this which makes it possible — even in the face of a powerful capitalist media — to meet, challenge and r after 250 columns defeat the lies of bourgeois ideology and win working people for class policies, for democratic solutions and away from anti-communism, national chauvinism, racism and sexism: The ideas of socialism are relevant to the problems faced by Canadians of unemployment, plant closures, wage cutting, s -up, environmental pollution, rape , murder, drug peddling, crime syndicates, pornography and perhaps most of all, the terrible threat of nuclear annihilation. The many-sided democratic struggles of Canadians against these unacceptable features of modern monopoly-capitalist life are both the source of a growing coalition of Canadians for redress of these problems, as well as the soil in which the ideas of scientific socialism we can take root and blossom. I have just returned from attending provincial federa- tion of labor conventions across Canada and was struck by the growing level-of discussion at these conventions — the introduction of class and socialist ideology into the debates, the growing demand for actions leadings to fun- damental change in Canada. If this column can lay any claim whatsoever to having been part of this great process now emerging in our coun- try, I should allude in my initial point of departure in April 1980: that of imbuing the struggle of Canadian’ working people with the spirit of scientific socialism; that of defending the great international working class move- ment and its most cherished jewel, the world socialist system, from the attacks of enemies from within and — without the labor movement. And together with my com- rades in the Communist Party and the left in the labor movement, that of mapping out the day-to-day tasks which grew out of workers’ needs, but elevated them up to another stage in the struggle against their oppressors. For me it has been a great five years. I’m now moving on to another task abroad in the Communist movement. — ‘Before I go, I would like to thank you for your help, criticism and encouragement over these years. I would like to thank the staff of the Canadian Tribune who weekly had the task of transforming my less than tidy copy into something decipherable for the print shop, to thank the Communist Party for the assignment which made this column possible. And finally, I would most of all like to thank the working class for the inspiration which shaped my copy. = | PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JANUARY 9, 1985 e 7 ai: