Poor Pay but Many Fringe Benefits : Soviet Factories Shape Workers’ Lives

For 30-year-old Valery A. Bascheev, a sheet-metal worker at the Byelorus tractor plant here, his job provides him not only with a living but a way of life.

Bascheev, a bachelor, lives in an apartment assigned to him by authorities at the plant. Most of his after-work recreation, his yearly vacation, advanced training and weekly groceries are also arranged at the plant.

In addition, the factory has its own medical facilities and health resorts--as well as nurseries, kindergartens and summer camps for the children of its 20,000 workers.

Byelorus Tractor also operates a Palace of Culture, with a 5,000-seat auditorium, and it has an indoor swimming pool and a stadium that can hold 25,000 spectators.

Bascheev, a stocky, dark-haired man with a quick smile, says he has applied to buy a dacha, or country house--through the factory, of course.

It is a fact of blue-collar life in the Soviet Union that the elaborate benefits built into industrial jobs are often more enticing than the wages. Factory-run kindergartens, for example, charge only 13 rubles a month (about $15) for taking care of a child during working hours. A four-week vacation at a union-run summer resort--for the one worker in five who might go each year--costs 78 rubles.

The average pay for the tractor plant’s 20,000 employees is 200 rubles a month (about $230), and the top pay for a handful of specialists ranges up to 400 rubles (about $465). But even with heavy subsidies for rent and food, almost every family needs at least two wage earners to make ends meet.

Moreover, wage increases are few and far between for virtually all Soviet industrial workers, regardless of their skills or length of service. On the other hand, factory officials said it is extremely rare for workers to be fired--no matter how much they might deserve it.

At first glance into the dark and noisy tractor plant, with its profusion of hard hats and safety glasses, it seems to be no different from factories in the West. In the dim light, however, a red banner with white lettering is visible in the rafters--”100% Plan Fulfillment Is a Matter of Honor for the Collective.”

Outside the main factory building, along Best Workers Avenue, there are larger-than-life photographs of pace-setting tractor builders.

Now, these old-fashioned ways of motivating workers are being supplemented by experimental techniques that provide a material incentive to work harder.

Under the so-called brigade concept, for example, a group of 50 workers may be assigned a task in tractor assembly and given the money and material to do it. If the brigade decides it can accomplish the task with only 40 workers, the same amount of wages is spread among 40, rather than 50 people.

Write Your Own Ticket

“They can shape the size of their own paychecks,” Lev V. Kozlousky, a deputy chief engineer, told a reporter during a recent tour of the plant. “People now see a direct connection between harder work and a bigger share. . . .”

The assembly line runs at a very high tempo, geared to produce 120 tractors on an eight-hour shift, factory officials said. Not surprisingly, it is here that the plant has its highest rate of worker turnover.

When another building is put up, two parallel assembly lines will be operated, one for domestic models and the other for export. About 20% of the plant’s annual output of 86,000 tractors is sold abroad, including some in the United States and Canada.

The new facility will also have “psychological relief rooms” for relaxing during work breaks with soothing music and slide shows in color, officials said.

Soviet factory managers have tried in several ways to break the monotony of work on the assembly line. Every 90 minutes, for instance, the line halts for 10 minutes. It is shut down 40 minutes for lunch.

Water Massages

Workers who use vibrating tools, such as automatic bolt-tighteners, are given water massages for their hands during their breaks. Also, job-switching is encouraged in order to provide variety.

Tamara Petrova Dogvach, one of the women who make up 30% of the factory work force, insisted that she likes the repetitive work.

“You can see the results of your effort immediately,” she said while on a brief break from bolting parts to tractor engines.

Labor turnover at this plant is 13% a year, Kozlousky said. He indicated that is relatively low, adding that in some instances several generations of the same family, including his, have worked here since the plant opened in 1950. He, his wife, their oldest daughter and their son all work at the plant, he said, and “my grandson, who is now 6 years old, says he will build tractors and be a director.”

As in other cities, housing has been a perennial problem in Minsk, which came through World War II with only 15% of its housing intact. Despite a heavy rebuilding program, supply still falls short of demand.

The tractor plant, according to Kozlousky, builds 400 apartments a year, “but living space is still an acute problem.”

Bascheev, who lives with his mother in a two-room apartment, has gone three times to the factory-run summer resort near the Black Sea and has traveled elsewhere, too. His favorite pastime is dining and dancing in a suburban restaurant. He has no car--the cheapest would cost him nearly three years’ pay--but getting to the restaurant is no problem, he said; it takes half an hour on the bus.

The young sheet-metal worker, who talked his way into a job at the tractor plant although at the time he was below the legal working age, has chalked up a number of other accomplishments. He is a shop steward and the plant’s checkers champion.

Not all Soviet workers match his dedication. At a Minsk watch factory, officials said, some workers failed to show up for weeks at a time. After extensive investigation, and with the approval of the trade union committee at the plant, nine of them were fired recently for prolonged absenteeism.

“Dismissal is really the ultimate punishment,” said Yevgeny S. Khorevsky, deputy director of the watch factory. “I wouldn’t stick my neck out (and fire anyone) without trade union consent.”

At the watch factory, 73% of the 9,125 workers are women. The average age is 34, and the average monthly pay is 190 rubles.

“Every day, at least one woman employee gives birth,” Khorevsky said. Even so, the labor turnover is only 8% a year. He said discontent over wages and conditions is practically non-existent.

Elsewhere, however, controversy has started over “wage leveling,” which narrows the differential between skilled and unskilled workers.

Boris M. Batrakhanov, a lathe operator from Saratov, recently charged in the Literary Gazette that the present system of pay limits is stifling innovation. He said he developed ways to increase his output until he was earning 1,000 rubles a month, and then co-workers started glowering at him and management transferred him to a job as lecturer on industrial efficiency at 350 rubles a month.

“If workers do not get rewarded for a full effort, they won’t make a full effort,” he concluded.