Workers Attracted by High Pay, Long Vacations

From high pay and new cars, the Soviet Union has turned unabashedly to Western-style incentives to attract workers to build the communist future.

Arc lights slash through the frigid Siberia air to keep construction going around the clock. A state greenhouse struggles to grow vegetables in a land with nine months of snow. An enlarged airport carries workers off to long, cheap vacations.

In a region where Stalin once exiled people, the state is now trying to entice them. Party slogans may line the tops of buildings, but the rhetoric of self-sacrifice is rarely heard.

“Young people working here can have their own cars,” said Neryungri Mayor Pyotr Fyodorov, sounding like a Western mayor enticing investment to his town. “We have approximately 5,000 private cars in the city”--one for every 12 people.

“The buying capacity here is very high--2,000 rubles ($2,600) a year in disposable income.”

And the state has made sure Siberians have something to spend it on.

The mayor boasted of consumer goods unavailable even in the populous western part of the country. Oranges and apples were piled in well-stocked shops--something often lacking even in Moscow.

Neryungri is a government priority, even more than other areas of resource-rich Siberia. Attracting and keeping workers for the coal mine, which will eventually fuel a local steel industry, is expensive.

Salaries are adjusted from the Moscow level. Anyone going to Neryungri receives an immediate 70% raise, followed by yearly raises of 20% for three years and 10% for two more. After five years, a worker plateaus at 2.5 times his base salary.

Mine employees average about $780 a month in a country where the national average is one-third that level. With rents at only $13 to $33 a month, they have plenty to spend.

Much of the cash is soaked up in annual vacations, which are 42 working days instead of the standard 24. Every third year an employee receives a free flight anywhere in the vast country. A factory poster listed cheap holidays in both allied and non-communist nations--although permission is more important than money for travel abroad.

Many workers are willing to come--for money, for adventure or to start a new life. Keeping them, however, is a problem.

“We think the most important thing for keeping the work force is the provision of good living conditions,” said Yuri Korkim, mayor of the regional capital of Yakutsk.

To do that, construction goes around the clock on apartments, schools, swimming pools and social facilities.

But even if every amenity is provided, it will always be difficult to find permanent residents. The cold is inhuman--it was minus-62 as the New Year struck in Neryungri--and the isolation is so extreme they call other parts of the Soviet Union “the mainland.”

“We are planning to stay five more years,” said Nina Nikin, a working mother selected by the Soviet Foreign Ministry to give a positive view of the area.

“Then we will return to Lake Baikal and build ourselves a yacht.”