Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/35

 Thus, the Committee for State Building and Construction is formed by agreement with the Builders' Union. The Chief Administration of the nationalised textile undertakings is formed by agreement with the All-Russian Textile Workers' Union, the Chief Administration of the nationalised leather undertakings by agreement with the Leather Workers' Union, the United State Engineering Department, a section of the Supreme Council of National Economy, is formed by agreement with the Metal Workers' Union. Two and a half years' experience of revolution convinced the trade unions that it was necessary to (1) construct a uniform plan of industrial administration, (2) send their representatives to these organs without interfering in the administrative and technical work of the undertaking, (3) give the elected factory board the necessary authority and ask its local organs to support the board's work; (4) send, through responsible officials of the administrative organs, periodical reports to the respective trade unions, (5) call periodical joint meetings of the All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions and the Supreme Council of National Economy for the consideration of fundamental questions affecting economic policy, (6) centralise the administration of industry with a view to a rational utilisation of all forces of production, (7) strive towards the simplification and the abolition of parallelism in administration, (8) combat parallelism arising from attempts of economic organs to assume the functions of a trade union, (9) reduce the number of members in the collegiate boards, and to hold every member individually responsible, (10) resort to individual management of factories wherever this is considered useful, (11) define the exact functions of the various trade union organs and their relations to the Soviet Government organs, and finally, (12) subordinate the narrow trade union interests to the interests of national economic construction.

These fundamental rules, the result of great experience, lay at the bottom of the whole economic policy of the trade unions. The trade unions do not assume the management of industry, they are not the sole organisers of production: the whole nationalised industry is managed by the state organs based on the representation of the trade unions which "by entering into the Soviet organisation become converted more and more into the fundamental basis of the Soviet Economic system." (Resolution of 9th Congress of Russian Communist Party).

Production taken as a whole included the organisation of labour, for labour is the most important factor in production. It may be said that all that the Russian Trade Unions did in organising production was to create organs in conjunction with the Soviets, but this cannot be said with regard to the organisation of labour. In this connection the trade unions exclusively undertake the state regulation of wages and the standardisation of labour while the government departments concerned with this, the Commissariat of Labour and its local Departments, serve as purely auxiliary organs.