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Show Wkfhm., 1 411 1 Ilia X RUSSIANS i. j Hi ': ;;'. . ; -.; U I - w w amm "th r ' V ; v'S Wife INSTALLMENT TWELVE The head of the Soviet labor movement was a very smart man of forty-three called Kuznetsov. He was really keen. He'd lived In America, graduated from Carnegie Institute of Technology with a master's mas-ter's degree in metallurgy, and it you tried to point out that his labor movement here wasn't really free, he'd come right back at you with some American example trying to prove that ours was even less free. He outlined their set-up like this. All Soviet unions representing 22,-000,000 22,-000,000 workers send delegates to the Ail-Union Trades Congress. This meets every year or so but hasn't since the war. This corresponds to our AFL and CIO national conventions conven-tions rolled into one. It's strictly labor no soldiers or farmers are In it. This big Congress elects fifty-five fifty-five members to something they call the Plenum. These fifty-five elect eighteen to something called the Presidium. And these eighteen elected elect-ed him Its secretary, which makes him head of the workers. He said at least 90 or 05 per cent of all workers belonged to trade unions. ? "' V' i s 1 , j - ' I jalV ' XX Stalin stayed in Moscow when Germany Ger-many advanced on city. So we asked him who didn't belong. "Well," he said, "some apprentices are too young, and then in the re-occupied re-occupied regions, it takes a little time to convince all workers they should belong." He said the dues were 1 per cent of a worker's salary. sal-ary. There is no Initiation fee, but they sell you a book costing only one rouble. "Now, is this a perfectly free union movement," we asked him, "or is it directed by your government?" govern-ment?" It was perfectly free, he assured us. Of course, he said, anyone they elected to their Congress must be approved by the government. He said, "in 1919 a strike in one steel mill lasted two days. And in 1923 there was another little strike In western Russia. We were changing chang-ing over from the old czarist money to Soviet roubles, and It took time to get it all printed and out to the workers. As soon- as the situation was explained to them, they went back to work. There have been no strikes since, and In the future there won't be any because our workers understand they are all working for each other." "If a worker is discontented and gets discharged for any reason, would it be difficult for him to get a job some place else?" "Very, very difficult," said Kuznetsov. Kuz-netsov. "Do you have any absenteeism?" "We simply don't have It without reason.". "But aren't workers sometimes a little late?" "Occasionally," he said. "The first time he is warned. The lecond time he may be fined. If it happens again, he is discharged. If a worker work-er fails to co-operate, damages too much material or does anything else which we consider serious, he may be arrested and tried before a judge, and if he is unable to prove his Innocence, In-nocence, sentenced to a number of years' penal labor. The rules In the factories are very strict and rigidly enforced." And the union officials encourage the workers to testify against a man guilty of these offenses of-fenses maybe they themselves bring charges against him. "Joining the trade union In any plant is completely voluntary," Kuznetsov Kuz-netsov said. "How do you account then, for the fact that practically everyone who Is eligible joins?" "It is to their advantage In any country, and particularly in the Soviet So-viet Union, where the Trade Union Movement offers many benefits. Here a union member received greater sick benefits than a nonunion non-union member. There is a housing shortage here and most factories own apartment houses which they rent to the workers. Union members receive re-ceive first consideration. "All workers are entitled to vacation vaca-tion with pay, but non-union members mem-bers cannot spend their vacations in the rest centers maintained for workers. If a worker is sick, the physician may recommend an ex tra week's vacation, and he can go to a special type of rest center equipped to care for invalids. But non-union members are not eligible." eligi-ble." "Usually about 6 per cent of an employee's salary goes for rent in these factory-owned apartments," he said. "Young apprentices live in rent-free dormitories. Older workers may live in them, too, but they pay. Skilled workers, or those who exceed their norms, are entitled to better quarters. Because their pay is more, their rent is proportionately propor-tionately higher." "What relations do you have with American labor?" we asked. "None at all with the AFL," he said. "We're very much disappointed. disap-pointed. Also, their representative, Mr. Watt, criticized our Russian Trade Movement at the last meeting meet-ing of the International Labor Organization Or-ganization in Philadelphia. He claimed we were not a free movement. move-ment. You can see that we are. I don't understand why your government govern-ment would permit this criticism of our trade unions." "Russia is your ally," he said. "I can't understand why your government govern-ment would permit it, and we simply sim-ply don't understand the AFL. It probably isn't the workers, but only the leaders who have these distorted distort-ed notions. Here we are sure that your workers really want to co-operate with ours, only the leaders won't permit it. We do have some relations with the CIO letters from Mr. Murray and several others. It is more sympathetic, and desires to co-operate, and more nearly understands under-stands the true position of workers in America and workers here. We hope some day we can co-operate with the American labor movement. After all, we are working for the same cause." Until we reach the Urals, which divide Russia-ln-Europe from Rus-sia-in-Asia, the country we fly over is exactly as it was up from Teheran the same thatched villages dominated domi-nated by white churches with red-painted red-painted onion domes. We crossed the Urals, which are, in this area, not mountains but low, rolling hills, wooded with birch, oak, elm, maple, ma-ple, but no pine. At this airport, as at all the others we are to touch, we are met by the local dignitaries and important Communists all grave, cap-wearing Russians, well-dressed by Communist Com-munist standards. Zeeses take us across the city to the house of the plant director, where we will spend the night. We drive through teemr ing, unpainted slums which are worse than those of Pittsburgh although al-though we keep In mind that Magnitogorsk Mag-nitogorsk is crowded because many industries have . been evacuated here. We leave the slums and go up a hill which, overlooking the slums and the blast furnaces, are the spacious spa-cious homes of the executives even as it Is in Pittsburgh. We come Into a paved residential street with gutters, sidewalks and big yards. Except for architectural differences, we might be in Forest Hills, New York, or Rochester, Minnesota's "Pill Hill." Magnitogorsk was started in 1916. There are now 45,000 workers In his plant, of whom 25,000 are construction construc-tion workers, for it Is expanding. Twenty open-hearth furnaces and six blast furnaces are operating, two of which were opened during the war. The mountain they mine contains an estimated 300,000,000 tons of ore which is 60 per cent iron, and another an-other 85,000,000 tons which will run from 50 to 45 per cent quite a stock pile! Eric tells me that we have only about 100,000,000 tons left at Hibblng, and are using these up at a wartime rate of 27,000,000 tons a year. After lunch we drive to the big steel plant I am riding with a correspondent. cor-respondent. Suddenly our car turns to one side as we overtake a long column marching four abreast, on its way to work at the plant Marching ahead of it, behind it and on both sides, are military guards carrying rifles with fixed bayonets. The second sec-ond thing is that the column itself consists of ragged women In makeshift make-shift sandals, who glance furtively at our cars. The correspondent nudges me. Nick, the NKVD man, is riding in the front seat I don't know how those women got there or where they were going, so I leave them as material for some mightier talent with greater imaginative imagi-native powers. Entering the blast furnace section, the director bellows two noteworthy statistics at us; the first, that on a 1,200,000,000 rouble business this year, he hopes to clear a 50,000,000 rouble profit. Secondly, that in this inferno, they have per month only eight Injuries per 10,000 employees. The armament factory takes the prize for the most sloppily organized shop we have seen In the Soviet Union. Un-ion. Stockingless girls with crude sandals, lathing shells for the Red Army, stand on heaps of curled metal scrap from their machines. Occasionally they are protected from its sharp edges by crude duck-boards. duck-boards. Some attempt is being made to remove the scrap. We see two girls carrying out a load of it on a Russian Rus-sian wheelbarrow, which is a kind of homemade litter, with one pair of wooden handles in front and one behind. be-hind. It carries a modest wheelbarrow-load but requires two people. They stumble along with it through the rubbish. We watch them milling shells for the Red Army. There is no assembly as-sembly belt but at one point they have devised a substitute. When one operation is finished, a shell is placed on a long, inclined rack, down which it rolls into the next room for the next operation. Only the rack is badly made and now and then a shell falls off. Instead of adjusting the rack, a girl is stationed sta-tioned by it to pick up the shells and put them back on straight. Now we go through a brick plant. We watch the women laboriously moving bricks by hand after each processing operation. As we are leaving the plant, we see another column of women marching under guard. A few hours on the plane brings us to Sverdlovsk, before the revolution revolu-tion called Ekaterinburg because it was founded by Catherine the Great. It was here in a cellar that the hard-headed hard-headed Bolsheviks shot weak-willed, j well-meaning Czar Nicholas II, his wife and family, later changing the name of the town. Sverdlovsk is another Soviet Pittsburgh, bustling with a million people. Sverdlovsk is the Soviet center for the manufacture of heavy machine tools. In one big shop we see a gigantic drop forge, made in Duis-burg, Duis-burg, Germany. I can well believe be-lieve that there are only four like it in the world. It can apply pressure of 10,000 tons. The plant itself is the same old Soviet story we have so far seen no light, dirty, bad floors, and in this one the roof leaks. Outside there is a summer shower and we watch the water pour down from the high ceiling onto the hot steel and get soaked ourselves as we walk through. But they have mended the roof over the most important machines. ma-chines. Across the street from our five-year-plan hotel is the marble opera house. It is a little too ornate, but Russians like it that way. It seems to be the most substantial and carefully care-fully built structure in town. It is the provincial opera house, built in 1903 under the czar. At Omsk the delegation of dignitaries digni-taries shakes hands with us and tells us that our bags will be left at the airport, where we will spend the night. The building is excellent, modern, simple and in good repair. n mi M sf x 1 . I - Ci S--Vt '.v J Martial law was declared in Moscow Mos-cow and ack-acks brought to city in great numbers. It seems substantially constructed. Omsk before the war had a population popu-lation of 320,000 and now has 514,000 evacuated workers, of course. We inspect the Mayor of Omsk Kishemelev Kuzma. This is his second sec-ond year in office. Before that he was Director of Automobile Highways, High-ways, a confusing title since the Soviet So-viet Union has few passenger cars and almost no highways. We ask him how he got elected and he answers promptly' that the people did it and goes into detail. There were in all five candidates, each representing one of the various vari-ous trade unions. Everybody in Omsk could vote, he says, and of course the ballot was secret In the empty airport waiting room, sprawled on the benches were two khaki-clad figures. One asked me something in Russian. The other one said, "Hell, Tex, he's no Russian." Rus-sian." I said, 'Tm an American. You guys American? too?" "I should hope to kiss a horse we are," said Tex. (TO BE CONTINUED) |