Page:Trade Unions in Soviet Russia - I.L.P. (1920).djvu/75



One of the greatest tasks of the union which have been carried out during the two? and a half years of existence of Soviet Russia has been the creation of new economic organs in the metal industry.

All the existing organs from the highest to the lowest have been created with the closest and direct participation of the union. All factory managements, the directorates of socialist trusts as well as the collegiate of the supreme economic organisation in the metal industry of the republic—the Metal Department of the Supreme Council of Public Economy, are appointed by agreement between the respective trade union organs and State institutions, usually from candidates put forward by the union. Thus during the past year the Central Committee of the Union confirmed the appointment of 134 factory (managements consisting of 64 per cent. workers, 8.5 per cent. employees and 27.5 per cent. engineers.

The union in conjunction with the Metal Department of the Supreme Council of Public Economy has carried out important work in organising the socialist trusts in the metal industry, which are constructed on purely industrial lines. Usually conferences were called of factory committees and factory managements, embracing several factories, at which questions of trustification and production programmes were discussed and at which the election of the head director of the trust took place. Thus at the present time the following large trusts exist in the metal industry.

1. The State Machine Construction Works is a trust embracing the largest locomotive and Railway Car construction works like the Sormova, Kolomensk, Briansk and Kharkoff Works as well as a group consisting of the Koulebaksk, Tashinsk and Wickson Works. The number of workers employed at these works amounts to 45,000. At the head of the directorate are comrades who formerly worked in the union and who were elected to the head management by the works conference.

2. The Central Management of the Heavy Industry (which embraces the largest metal works in the Don Basin like the Dnieprowsk, Briansk and Mourievsk, altogether 27 works with 42,000 workers) is composed of comrades enjoying the complete confidence of the Union, one of whom is a former member of the Central Committee of the Union.

3. At the head of the Central Directorate of Artillery Works (which embrace all metal works producing war material) there are comrades who were elected at the conferences and confirmed by the union.

4. In the Ural, five district managements were organised embracing all the metal works in the Urals, and organised in <the same manner as those above.