Soviet Trade Unions to Get Right to Strike Under Draft Law

Soviet trade unions, long closely controlled by Communist authorities, will be given the right to strike under a draft law to be adopted in the next few months, union leader Stepan Shalayev said Wednesday.

The draft law follows sporadic reports from across the country of wildcat strikes by miners, bus drivers and carpet weavers demanding better pay and conditions.

Leningrad police officers demonstrated in the city center April 9 to back a series of demands, according to the newspaper Socialist Industry.

Stoppages linked with nationalist unrest have paralyzed industry in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan several times in recent months.

“The right (to strike) is being considered a means to press management to speed up the resolution of labor disputes,” Shalayev said in an interview with the trade union paper Trud.

“But it is an extreme measure which should be applied only in exceptional cases,” he added.

The draft law says: “A trade union committee . . . has the right to stop work at an enterprise in an organization when the procedure, established by law, of considering a labor dispute is being violated or when management does not live up to an agreement that has been reached.”