Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/42



All these unions are constructed on the same principle.

The nucleus of the union is the factory committee. All factory committees of a given district (or uyesd) form a branch of the union: all branches in the territory of a province or definite county form a provincial (gubernia) department and all factory committees, branches and departments are the organs of the corresponding All-Russian trade union. The union is centralised: fifty per cent. of the contribution goes to the funds of the central committee of the union (from the first of May of this year the membership contribution will be 2 per cent. of their wages).

The connection between the industrial unions and their organs and the co-ordination of their work is established by transverse organs of the trade union movement. In small localities, secretariats, uniting all the workers and employees; in uyesds, bureaux of the trade unions are set up on the basis of representation from the branches; in provinces, councils of trade unions based on the representation of provincial departments, and in the centre the All-Russia Council of Trade Unions the executive of which is elected by the All-Russia Congress and the members from the national trade unions in the proportion of one for every fifty thousand members.

The concentration and growth of the trade union movement will be seen by the following figures, presented at the congresses by trade union councils, departments and branches:

It will be seen from this small table that the number of organised workers rose unceasingly (the difference in the figures between the data supplied by the councils and by the branches is explained by the fact that several categories do not enter into the trade union councils) and that the number of national organisations have increased very little. More than that, according to the decision of the third congress, a regrouping and fusion will take place as a result of which all the organised workers in Russia will be grouped into twenty-three centralised unions each of which will have its department in every province and branch in every district.

Such a small number of unions having such a large number of organised workers became possible because auxiliary workers joined the unions of the main industry and only in connection with commissariats and state institutions did we depart from our principle of "one undertaking, one union." By undertaking is meant a complete administrative, technical and economic entity.