Job Pressure Reported in Soviet Reforms

The main impact on most people of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s campaign to overhaul the economy is heavier pressure on workers to produce, a public opinion expert believes.

Recent polls indicate that 90% of the population support the drive for perestroika , or restructuring, according to Vilen N. Ivanov, director of the Sociological Research Institute. But few of the factory foremen and ordinary workers believe it has changed things for the better so far, Ivanov said in a recent interview with Izvestia, the government newspaper.

“Today, most people feel restructuring only in terms of greater work pressure,” Ivanov said.

Complaints on Work

More than half of the engineers and technicians at 500 Moscow factories, he said, complained of “excessive work load” in a recent survey. At one plant, he said, 62% of the workers linked heavier job pressures with Gorbachev’s program.

A total of 6,000 people in 26 Moscow districts were polled, he said, indicating a very large sample by Western standards.

While one in five factory directors and other top managers felt perestroika was working well in their plants, he said, “this opinion is not shared by a single shop chief.” Of the total, about half said that restructuring has had no effect, and the other half said it was proceeding very slowly with great difficulty, Ivanov reported.

At one Moscow plant, he added, about one-third of the workers said they will wait until restructuring becomes more clearly defined before they decide whether to support it or not.

“The closer you get to production, the poorer the evaluation of the current processes,” he said.

In the Republic of Kazakhstan, he said, 40% of the work force opposed a change in wage systems proposed by Gorbachev to link pay more closely to individual output.

But according to one worker quoted in the Izvestia article, reliance on a guaranteed salary regardless of productivity has been “the death of efficiency” in the past.

Ivanov said few managers have taken advantage of opportunities to eliminate “wage leveling” whereby nearly all workers get the same pay no matter how effectively they perform.

Gorbachev’s plan to require plant managers to operate on a self-financing basis--either make a profit or close down the enterprise--also is running into opposition, Ivanov said.

Despite hopes that such managers would have greatly enlarged freedom of action, he said, they are still controlled by detailed directives issued by the government.

“Analysis of the situation in this sphere offers little grounds for optimism as yet,” he said. “The point is that the financial and economic relations between enterprises and the state have not yet undergone substantial changes.”

“Radical changes have not yet occurred in the nature, organization or remuneration of workers’ labor,” he said. “The consumer market remains the same, and, moreover, the growth in the manufacture of consumer products last year was below the rate in 1985.” Even the much-touted election of factory directors, he said, has not always been done in a democratic manner.

“The lack of a fully developed system for nominating candidates leads to a situation where not infrequently they are sent down from above,” he observed.

His surveys indicated that workers and managers tend to blame each other for lack of more rapid progress.

In the Sevastopol district of Moscow, he reported, factory officials mentioned workers’ inertia and lack of initiative while the rank-and-file referred to “empty talk, indifference and wait-and-see attitude of leaders with regard to restructuring.”