so make industry a fit place for human beings to work in. It is controlled from top to bottom by the trade unions. They select its officers.
The Department of Labor's activities may be summed up under the following general heads: (1) Registration and distribution of labor; (2) regulation of wages, hours, and working conditions; (3) health protection and accident prevention in industry; (4) labor and industrial statistics.
Under the first head is comprised the employment service of Soviet Russia. All the people out of work are registered with the special local employment sections of the Labor Department and from there distributed to the various industries wherever there may be need for workers. This is done in close co-operation with the trade unions concerned. Under the second head is comprised the working-out of the trade union scales and agreements. As we have seen in a previous chapter, about all the Department of Labor has to do in this matter is to rubber-stamp what the trade unions have decided upon. It is the direct representative of the general Government in all the latter's negotiations with the unions over changes in industrial working conditions. In the matter of health and accidents in industry, the Department is very active. It maintains a large corps of inspectors, most of whom come directly from the unions, to see that the best possible conditions are secured and kept up. The statistics it gathers are of real value to the people. A special function of the Department of Labor is to enforce all the laws and trade union agreements relating to industry.
In a preceding chapter we have shown in detail the part played by the trade unions in industry. They have a practical monopoly in the establishment of the wages and working conditions of the toilers. They are also a most important factor in educating the great masses to the new discipline and industrial re-organization made necessary by the revolution. And, finally, they have an important share in the actual management of industry through their direct participation in the many local and national boards of the Supreme Economic Council and the other industrial departments of the Government.
The Communist Party, bearing on its shoulders the main burden of the revolution, watches closely over
81
