Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/16

 employers. There was not a single industry, not a single factory or large works where the workers from the first days of the revolution did not put forward a number of economic demands such as: increase of wages, reduction of the working day, payment for period of strike, etc. The Councils of Workers' Delegates organised Conciliation Boards, Dispute Committees, Labour Exchanges, established an 8-hour day and adopted repressive measures against employers. In a word, they played a very energetic -part in the economic struggle of the working class.

The Councils of Workers' Delegates, while often taking the initiative in the settlement of economic conflicts, also took the initiative in convening a national conference for the purpose of establishing an All-Russian centre. The first conference of 82 Councils of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates, which was held at the beginning of April in 1917, in Petrograd, passed a number of resolutions on the question of economic policy. The Conference carried resolutions on general labour policy, an 8-hour day, a minimum wage, freedom of organisation, conciliation boards, labour exchanges, factory inspection, control and organisation of industry, compulsory military service, importation of labour, social insurance and unemployment. All these resolutions bore the imprint of the moderate socialists, who at that time had the overwhelming majority in the Soviets. As the resolution on general labour policy says—"the struggle between labour and capital must conform with the conditions, of an as yet incomplete revolution and the menace of war from without which must define its form." The Conference advocated labour exchanges with equal representation of capital and labour, and declared for government pressure on the employers, thus striving, as far as possible, to smooth over the class antagonism of the first period of the Russian Revolution. In connection with industrial organisation the Conference accepted a resolution in which it called upon the workers energetically to build trade unions, recommended the organisation of local, regional and national organisations and considered it the immediate duty of the trade union movement to convene a national conference of trade unions. The Conference instructed the Department of Labour of the Petrograd Council of Workers' Delegates, together with the central bureaux of Petrograd and Moscow, to convene a national congress of trade unions. On April 17th an organising commission was set up, which sent out representatives to the largest centres ot Russia, and, on June 20th, towards the end of the fourth month of the Russian Revolution, the third national trade union conference met in Petrograd and laid the foundations for the All-Russian Trade Union movement.

The Third Trade Union Conference, for the first time in the history of Russia, drew together representatives from various parts of this enormous country. At this Conference there were present 220 delegates with power to vote and 27 in a consultative capacity; these represented 967 unions and 51 central bureaux with a total membership of 1,475,249. The business of the Conference was to lay the foundation of an All-Russian