Labor and goes into effect at once. The following is an extract from a Governmental decree of December 12, 1918:
"The scales of the All-Russian unions, approved by the Central Council of those organizations, and the Department of Labor, are universally obligatory in all parts of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic."
In the official report on the procedings of the III congress of the All-Russian Trade Unions occurs the following passage, page 15:
"Russia is the only country in the world where the wages are fixed exclusively by the trade unions. The decision of the All-Russian Council of Trade Unions with regard to the fixing of wages is automatically confirmed by the Department of Labor. No institution in Soviet Russia can fix or change the rate of pay without the sanction of the unions. THE STATE REGULATION OF WAGES IS THE MONOPOLY OF THE RUSSIAN TRADE UNIONS."
These are large powers, and in view of them it seems ridiculous for American labor leaders, with their own organizations fighting desperately against injunctions, open shop campaigns, organized wholesale scabbery, etc., and fruitlessly demanding even the slightest legislative consideration from a hostile Government, to sneer at the alleged weakness of the Russian trade unions.
The trade unions' part in the technical side of industry, is of two general kinds, (1) development of the organization, skill and discipline of labor; (2) participation in the actual management of industry. In both spheres the unions play an important role. We shall consider them separately:
With respect to the first: The revolution and the civil wars and blockade that attended it absolutely shattered the old-time industrial system, together with all its social and political backgrounds. The whole thing has been reduced to ruins. An altogether new and different economic system must be built from the ground up and infused with the spirit of Communism. This involves the most prodigious task of education that any nation was ever confronted with, especially in view of the fact that the old slave-driving methods in industry have been abolished and the only way to get the new industries and discipline created is to convince the great masses of their necessity and to induce them to put them into effect. Upon the trade unions falls the burden of this enormous work of education.
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