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management, and the technical reorganisation of factories, on the principle of the fullest subdivision of labour of the managing staff as well as of separate, workers.
6. Thus as a condition precedent to the organisation which should accustom Russian industry to the spirit, hitherto foreign to her, of modern, large, Western European industry, in the conditions which we are experiencing at the present moment, it is to a considerable degree important to standardise labour by a definite system of wages based on the principle of the responsibility of the workers for the productivity of their labour.
The Conference therefore resolves:
1. As the improvement of the condition of the working class in the period of the political dictatorship of the proletariat wholly depends on the success of its efforts to revive the productive forces of the country, the All-Russia Union of Metal Workers must construct its system of wages as a system which regulates productivity with the aim of reviving national economic life.
2. The piecework system of remuneration applied during the last six months played an important historical part in the process of reviving Russian industry, and must be practised the future in so far as the possibilities of changing over to more perfect method of remuneration are still technically unrealisable.
3. The Congress recognises as the fundamental principle of remuneration of labour, the collective responsibility of the working class of a given undertaking or group of undertaking (trusts) for the general output. The Congress proposes to the Central Committee to exert its efforts to widely extend this System of wages."
All the leading work as well as the work of carrying out the wage rates is done by the union, for which a special part of the union apparatus is adapted. In the factories the evaluation and standardisation of labour is carried out by a special trade union so-called "Wages Committee." This Committee is elected under the guidance of the union by the Workers and employees of a given undertaking, and is guided in its work by the regulations of the regional branch of the union. Attached to this Committee there is a standardisation bureau which ascertains the standard of output of the workers, groups of workers and the factory. Persons representing the higher technical staff also participate in the work of the committee and the bureau. The absence of opposing class interests in the factory renders the work of the wages committee and the factory management to a considerable extent harmonious. All conflicts which may arise from a misinterpretation of the guiding instructions of the union or simply from insubordination are submitted for decision to the regional branch of the union. The latter organises a special wages department which supervises all the work of establishing wage rates in the metal works of the region. The highest authority in the matter of wages in the metal industry is the central committee of the union, which has a special wages-standardisation department.
