Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/71



The Metal Workers' Union at the present moment is a national organisation which embraces all those engaged in the metal and metal working industry. All workers, engaged in obtaining metal from the mines and working this metal in any form, from smelting to the making of machines and metal implements, are included in our Union. Besides this it includes all occupations in a metallurgical or metal working undertaking irrespective of category or trade. Thus, our members include skilled and unskilled workers, the office staff, technicians and engineers; workers engaged on different crafts in the metal works, as the wood mould makers for instance, are all included in our union.

This principle of industrial organisation was accepted by the union in 1917, and to a considerable degree constituted our strength in the revolutionary class struggle. At the present moment it is an essential condition of the work of the union in organising the metal industry on socialist foundations.

The extraordinary growth of interest of the workers in the industrial organisation even in the middle of 1917 resulted in more than 50 per cent, of all the metal workers becoming members of the union. This gave the opportunity for many local organisations on their own initiative to raise the question, at general labour meetings, of compulsory membership in the unions for all metal workers. The result of this movement, which was supported by the second All-Russian Conference, is that now practically all workers and employees in the metal industry are members of the Union. This to a considerable degree lightens our task in working out rates of wages.

The scheme of organisation of the metal workers' union is based on the following: the primary organisation is the factory committee. This is elected every six months at a general meeting of workers and employees and generally consists of from 5 to 11 members. The main task of the Committee is to carry out all the trade union regulations in the Factory; it deals with the protection of labour, trade union agitation and propaganda, supplies the workers with necessaries, clothes as well as articles of general consumption, and maintains the fundamental basis of trade union and industrial discipline among the members of the union. The Conference of Factory Committees of a given industrial area, usually a territorial area a little smaller than a "government" (gubernia), is the higher directing organ within that area. This conference elects the regional committee which manages these regional branches of the All-Russia Union of Metal Workers.

Usually these committees are in the industrial centres of the regions. As subsidiary machinery the regional Committee may have its agents in the various towns embraced by it, but these are not obligatory; such agents are usually elected at local meetings of the members and carry out the instructions of the higher organ.