The Making of a Minsk Tractor

Red banners and "thirteenth pay " bonuses stimulate workers

Soviet propaganda both sentimentalizes and glorifies industrial workers as the backbone of the revolution. Like the legendary miner Alexei Stakhanov, who dug an unprecedented 102 tons of coal in one six-hour shift, workers are constantly praised for scaling greater heights of industrial productivity, led on by the guiding spirit of Communist Party leadership.

At an international nongovernmental tribunal held last year in Washington, D.C., to inquire into the status of human rights in the U.S.S.R. and East bloc countries, Soviet emigrants painted a different picture. They described a sullen labor force griping about low wages, unsanitary or hazardous working conditions and trade union leadership that executes management's dictates rather than representing employees. Drunkenness on the job and absenteeism were said to be chronic problems that often resulted in shoddy goods. Although workers were assigned quotas, there was little incentive to exceed them because once someone overproduced, everyone else was driven to work at the new level.

The reality is surely somewhere between these two extremes. TIME Reporter-Researcher John Kohan visited the Minsk tractor factory, one of the largest manufacturers of farming equipment in the Soviet Union. His report on the vast industrial complex that spreads out over almost 250 acres and employs 25,000 people:

The tractors clank down the 200-yd.-long assembly line like gigantic metal insects: 7,500 tractors a month, 90,000 a year, all bearing the trademark Belarus MTZ. Brigades of young laborers clad in work clothes or jeans swarm over each monster, slipping front axles and gear boxes into place, bolting on metal casings, attaching three or four giant wheels.

Finally, after 53 stages of manufacture, the machines lumber off the assembly line; the bright blue ones are destined for the vast farm lands of the Soviet Union, the brilliant red ones for more than 70 nations around the globe. About 3,000 of them have even found their way to the U.S.

The overriding preoccupation in any Soviet factory is fulfilling the five-year plan that has been agreed to in advance by an individual factory and the government. Says Serafim Dedkov, deputy director of the Minsk plant: "We have a five-year plan, a yearly plan and a monthly plan. If we have set the goal of 90,000 tractors in a year, that works out to roughly 330 a day. We have to work rhythmically, turning out the prescribed number every day. If we only make 100 today, we simply can't make 560 tomorrow."

Red and white banners hanging from the walls and rafters exhort the workers to strive for higher productivity. PRECISE RHYTHM, HIGH TEMPO, EXCELLENT QUALITY, says one. The portraits of outstanding workers, only slightly smaller than the pictures of morose Politburo members that adorn buildings before national holidays, line the factory's central avenue. The plant runs on two shifts from 7:40 in the morning until midnight, but the assembly line workers, whose average age is about 30, seem relaxed. At times they even stand around joking. Despite the ever constant exhortations to increase productivity, the Soviets have an easygoing attitude. Minsk employees, for example, are not required to dress in work uniforms on the shop floor.

The plant has what Dedkov calls "a fund for economic stimulation." The fund rewards brigades of productive workers with bonuses called the "thirteenth pay" at year's end. Inducements to greater output are also built into the wage system. Most employees of the Minsk factory are paid a piecework rate for each item they produce. The amount is determined by the quality of the work, the number of pieces turned out and whether that exceeds production norms. Dedkov claims that managers are very careful before they raise goals so that a worker does not end up receiving less pay for better work.

Should a worker feel he is not being properly compensated, he can complain to an official of his union called a profsoyuz. Unions are almost like state agencies; indeed the former chief of the KGB, Alexander Shelepin, was the official head of the U.S.S.R. trade union movement for many years. "The goals of management and the profsoyuz are the same here," says Kazimir Kaspirovich, deputy chairman of the professional union at the factory. "We have no major disagreements with management."

Almost every aspect of a Minsk employee's life is centered around his factory. The tractor plant provides schools for workers and their children, summer camps for kids and vacation cabins for adults. The factory-built "palace of culture" boasts 65 amateur theatrical groups, choirs and dance companies, and there is also a giant sports stadium.

Such extensive services and facilities are maintained at the cost of a smaller paycheck for the Soviet worker than for his American counterpart. The average wage for a 41-hour week at the Minsk plant is 205 rubles ($308) a month. But a full-course lunch in the factory cafeteria costs only 50 or 60 kopecks (750 to 900), and rent for a factory-subsidized two-room apartment, including heat, electricity, water and telephone, is a scant 12 to 15 rubles ($18 to $23) a month. Medical care is free, and outstanding workers are eligible for factory-sponsored trips to Black Sea and Baltic resorts.

Thus the incentive to keep production at high levels is strong, even away from the shop floor, and Dedkov insists that at the Minsk factory there are no discussions about whether workers can fulfill the plan. The talk is only about ways to overfulfill it. "If we work well, we can build more rest centers, pioneer camps and preventive medical centers," he says. "If we don't, we must cut back. Everyone from the factory director on down works with this in mind."

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