Gorbachev Decree Bans Strikes in Crucial Industries : Soviet Union: The new ‘anti-crisis’ program is expected to serve as a blueprint for reform in months ahead.

After weeks of delay, Mikhail S. Gorbachev launched his new “anti-crisis” program on Thursday with a presidential decree banning strikes in the Soviet Union’s most crucial industries and offering plump incentives to their workers in an effort to shore up the collapsing economy at its base.

The Soviet president’s decree, read on the nightly television news, noted that with the gross economic output plummeting at the annual rate of 10% and millions of people threatened with unemployment, “the situation calls for special measures.”

The announcement promised special financial benefits for the energy and transportation sectors, including pay increases and greater liberty to sell their products and services, but it also called on local authorities to crack down hard on strike organizers.

The Soviet government has successfully sold the anti-crisis program to almost all 15 constituent republics as a working combination of “whips and cookies”--the Russian equivalent of sticks and carrots--and officials said Thursday that it could already be considered the working blueprint for reform over the coming months.

Meant initially to stabilize the economy, the anti-crisis program also lays out plans for the transition from central planning to a market-based system, including the broad sale of state property to private owners, and for changes in the legal and banking systems meant to attract large-scale foreign investment.

The program is expected to face its first real test next week during a threatened walkout by the nation’s air traffic controllers and pilots.

Still smarting from this spring’s nine-week coal miners’ strike, the government is warning the pilots and controllers that if they go ahead with the walkout, they will be hit with the full force of the law.

“We have attentively studied Mr. Reagan’s methods in these cases,” Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir I. Shcherbakov said, referring to the former President’s tough tactics during the 1981 U.S. air traffic controllers’ strike.

“I want to warn the air traffic controllers and pilots,” Shcherbakov told a Moscow news conference. “The strike will immediately be declared illegal, and we’ll apply the law fully.”

Unions representing thousands of pilots and controllers are threatening to strike next Tuesday if their demands for higher salaries and pensions and better working conditions are not fulfilled.

Prime Minister Valentin S. Pavlov said Thursday that because of the strike by up to 300,000 coal miners this spring, some mines will have to close, and some of the miners will lose their jobs for good.

“Many mines are damaged beyond repair,” he said. The strike cost the economy more than 30 million tons of lost coal production.

Shcherbakov predicted that the anti-crisis program, with its strike ban, will be ready for publication in about four days.

He added that Cabinet members and local leaders have reached agreement on several key political issues connected with the program, including questions of taxation, foreign trade and privatization.

In another development, the Russian Federation canceled the hated 5% presidential sales tax on most goods.

Russian Federation leader Boris N. Yeltsin told the legislature Thursday of the rescinding of what many people call “the Gorbachev tax.” Yeltsin said the federation’s premier, Iivan Silayev, signed a document Wednesday abolishing the levy.

The tax, introduced by Gorbachev in December, was meant to guarantee the federal budget needed revenues in a transition era of budget-sharing with the republics.

But the tax set off howls of protest in almost every republic. Abolition of the levy was a chief demand of the striking coal miners.

Meanwhile, a long-awaited law on free Soviet emigration remained caught in legislative limbo Thursday after once again falling just short of passage during a confused session of the Supreme Soviet.

Introduced in November, 1989, the measure languished in various committees until the beginning of this month despite the extra trade benefits the Soviet Union could win from the United States under the Jackson-Vanik Amendment by enshrining its liberalized emigration practices in law.

The bill’s sponsors expected a relatively easy battle--after all, they were backed by the government, and the draft would merely make national law conform to Soviet obligations under various international pacts on human rights.

But they had not reckoned with the legacy of decades of isolationism, nor with the overwhelming new concern, in a government already deeply in debt, over the price tag.

Ivan D. Laptev, chairman of one of the Supreme Soviet’s two chambers, argued powerfully that the bill must be passed immediately, saying it is necessary for political, legal and ethical reasons.

For the common citizen who has been kept all his life from traveling abroad, Laptev said, “It doesn’t matter if a dictator has closed the doors to him, or if it was 500 deputies who did it. For him, the doors are still closed, and his rights are still violated.”

Conservative deputies, however, contended that the country could lose many of its best people.

And deputies remained confused about whether allowing freedom of travel would cost the government billions of dollars to add on trains, planes, customs personnel and border posts, as some claim, or bring a net profit because of increased fees and ticket prices.