Evening star., 1946-09-22
Russia Hard Put
To Find Labor
Bv Remberf James

efforts to meet manpower demands is
written daily in newspaper help
wanted" advertisements and signs
above factory entrances throughout the
nation.
1t is no easy job to line up the 7,000,-
900 new workers required by the five
year plan for industry, transport and
construction jobs. not to mention other
millions needed to bring the collective
farms working force back to the nor
NAL level. In the war-devastated areas
whole towns and regions must be re-
built.
In Moscow. newpaper advertisements
read like this:
Help wanted: Laborers, foremen,
blacksmiths. carpenters, bookkeepers,
typists. Apply Red Pipe Works"
Schools Graduate 400, 900.
Here's another from the newspaper,
Evening Moscow: "Wanted-Pipeft-
ters, plasterers, carpenters, bricklayers,
glazers. Apply Moscow City First of May
District Construction Trust Executive
Committee"
Advertisements like these have been
running for years. Similar help-wanted
signs over factory doors list just as
many categories of needed workers as
they did months ago.
Labor reserve schools recently grad
uated almost 100000 young skilled
workers. The number of boys and girls
studying in these schools, increasing
annually, is expected to reach 100000
by 1850.
big textile factory in Orekhovo-
Zuyevo has opened 10 schools to train
young textile workers. Other factories
in other lines have similar schools.
The severity of the labor shortage in
transportation and industry was dis
closed last month in the labor paper
Trud, which reported that the Soviet
trade unions had blocked the Transport
Ministry's effort to work railroad enl-
ployes overtime and on their free days.
Minister Ivan Kovalev had sought
thus to gain an estimated 1000, 900 man
power work days for the railroads which
need not only skilled workers but scores
of thousands of laborers for digging out
roadbeds and preparing bridge and sta
tion sites
Trud only recently carried an item re-
porting the fining of the Krivoi Rog
Geological Exploring Trust of the Min
istry of Iron Industry for using over
time without trade union permission.
The paper said this was another ex-
ample of the attempts of some enter
prises to cover up the labor shortage by
working regular staffs overtime.
Workers Free TO Choose.
Workers are free to choose any job
for which they are qualified without
any pressure from the state or the
trade unions. The only exception is
that students finishing schools where
they were trained for certain specially
are expected to work in that industry.
A student bricklayer, for example, is not
expected to become a chauffeur and
student typist is not supposed to enter
a textile factory.
Writing about Russia's labor needs,
the economic correspondent of the
Moscow News said recently: The war
did not bring any drop in the number
of jobs that had to be filled. In spite
of the fact that great numbers of men
have been demobilized, the demand for
workers in industry is exceedingly
great
Two solutions have been discussed at
length in the Soviet press.
One proposes ''socialistic competition
which means employing present man.
power to best advantage, with money,
honor awards and better housing offered
as incentives. The other method has
been to recruit collective farm and other
village youths. Trud writer S. Trubnikov
said last April that the machinery for
this recruiting has been set up largely
for the benefit of the coal, steel and Oil
industries.
Forms Short of Help.
The Soviet government is willing to
take some laborers from farms for in
dustry but is not willing to go too far
along that line. During the harvest
season just ending, farms themselves are
not oversupplied with help.
On recent visits to war-ravaged villages
and collective farms in White Russia and
the Ukraine. foreign correspondents saw
farms which had lost as high as. 80 per
cent of their workmen between the ages
of l8 and so. Their work is carried on
now by boys. old men and women.
In the cities. women still are doing
jobs taken over from men during the
war-running streetcars and buses, work.
ing in industries and Offices and serving
as policemen.
The government, party officials, the
press and the radio repeatedly have said
that there is work for everybody in the
Soviet Union-and not enough people to
do it all.
The best information available in
dicates that the country could absorb
several million more workers-unskilled
as well as skilled-and fnd plenty for
them to do.