The World - News from Feb. 8, 1988

Nearly 80,000 bureaucrats have lost their jobs in the Ukraine as part of a campaign to streamline administration in the Soviet republic, according to the local Communist Party newspaper. The officials were laid off when 14 ministries and government agencies and 83 lower-level organizations in the republic were abolished, said the newspaper, Pravda Ukrainy. It added that 1,500 industrial enterprises have been enlarged, suggesting that many of the unwanted administrators have been placed in factories. Soviet authorities have promised that all workers who lose their jobs as a result of Kremlin leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s economic and social reforms will get alternative employment.