Word: workers
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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...plant has what Dedkov calls "a fund for economic stimulation." The fund rewards brigades of productive workers with bonuses called the "thirteenth pay" at year's end. Inducements to greater output are also built into the wage system. Most employees of the Minsk factory are paid a piecework rate for each item they produce. The amount is determined by the quality of the work, the number of pieces turned out and whether that exceeds production norms. Dedkov claims that managers are very careful before they raise goals so that a worker does not end up receiving less...
...Should a worker feel he is not being properly compensated, he can complain to an official of his union called a profsoyuz. Unions are almost like state agencies; indeed the former chief of the KGB, Alexander Shelepin, was the official head of the U.S.S.R. trade union movement for many years. "The goals of management and the profsoyuz are the same here," says Kazimir Kaspirovich, deputy chairman of the professional union at the factory. "We have no major disagreements with management...
Such extensive services and facilities are maintained at the cost of a smaller paycheck for the Soviet worker than for his American counterpart. The average wage for a 41-hour week at the Minsk plant is 205 rubles ($308) a month. But a full-course lunch in the factory cafeteria costs only 50 or 60 kopecks (750 to 900), and rent for a factory-subsidized two-room apartment, including heat, electricity, water and telephone, is a scant 12 to 15 rubles ($18 to $23) a month. Medical care is free, and outstanding workers are eligible for factory-sponsored trips...
...rise, if still less frequent than in the U.S. (.3 divorces per marriage, vs. America's .5), are also inexpensive: the basic filing fee is about $15, though additional charges can run the final divorce bill up to $150, a big chunk of the average worker's $240-a-month wage...
That moderation may end when Julien takes charge. Editor of the paper's monthly supplement Le Monde Diplomatique since 1973, Julien is further to the left and more virulently anti-American than almost any other senior journalist on the staff. The son of a railway worker, he was educated in the U.S. at the University of Notre Dame, and joined Le Monde as a foreign news editor in 1951. His favorite editorial litany, honed to perfection in front-page editorials at Diplomatique, concerns the revolutionary struggle of Latin America to escape American influence. Says a longtime rival: "Julien turned...