Page:Sergei Ilich Kaplun - The Protection of Labor in Soviet Russia (1920).pdf/19



One of the chief questions of the organization of labor protection with which the Soviet Government was faced, is the establishment of an institution for the supervision of the proper realization of labor protection laws. The revolutionary elements of the proletariat of all countries have always put forward the demand that labor inspection should be transferred to the labor organizations. But even the so called "Revolutionary" Government of the first period of the Russian Revolution did not dare to take this measure. Like certain Western European countries, it considered It the maximum of radicalism to admit even as assistants in this inspection, workers who enjoyed no authority or rights. These assistants had no right to be connected with any labor organization and their whole business was to represent a semi-actual representation of the proletariat in the organization of the protection of labor, Only an assistant who had passed four months in this unenviable role of official and who had by this time completely estranged himself from the masses could become an inspector of labor.

The proletarian revolution, of course, instantly put an end to this system and realized the old revolutionary motto of elected labor inspection. By the decree of the 7th of May, 1918, the old labor inspection, hateful to the Russian working class, was abolished, and in its place was established a purely proletarian labor inspection. The principal decree was furthermore developed and supplemented with a number of orders, instructions and circulars.

Labor inspectors are elected at labor conferences of representatives of trade unions and of factory and works committees of those districts in which