Gorbachev Addresses Uralmash Workers

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

funds. This is a key question for us.

[Gorbachev] Tell me, do you compare your output? Is it competitive on the world market? At least, what percentage is competitive? In connection with that, my next question: For your competitive output, what is the difference between union prices and the world prices at which this output is sold?

[Stronganov] By way of example, I will say that our quarry excavator is absolutely competitive with foreign machines of the same class. We supply this equipment to Soviet customers for 190,000 Rubles. There has never been an instance when we sold an excavator abroad for less than R600,000.

17 [Chebotarev] The subsidy from the works is almost R7 million.

[Chebotarev] I am Yuiry Fedorovich Chebotarev, chief of the social and cultural service directorate of the Uralmash works. I would like to say a few words, specifically, on the subject of consumer services. [passagee omitted: covered by referent item]

[Chebotarev] There is such an initiative, but the right to carry out such a transferral has not yet been given to the local soviets.

16 [Gorbachev] How much housing do you have and what is the subsidy for maintaining it?

18 [Gorbachev] Obviously many people would agree to take apartments as their own property?

20 [Gorbachev] But this concerns your housing, it is departmental.

21 [Chebotarev] Departmental; yes, it is departmental, but there are many complicated issues here.

[Gorbachev] But this is a matter of handing them over for free. The apartments are received; people live according to the norm. We are not talking about those who are waiting. Their situation, of course, must be improved, but those whose housing corresponds to the norms should have it given to them as their own property, for free. Let them amaintain their apartments themselves and pay for it themselves. For comrades, when we say that rents here are low, this is an artificial approach. They reduced wages, and at the expense of this they made housing cheap.

Naturally, this does not concern people in need, people of little means. The state is bound to take care of them, but as far as the basic mass is concerned, it is possible to act in this way. However, when someone realises that it is his own apartment, he will maintain it in a different way, and the housing stock will be in a completely different condition, especially our entrances.

24 Look at what the West has done!, There wages decide everything. 25 LD3004111690TAKE2

[Excerpts] [Gorbachev continues] Public stock is very small. On the whole, people live on their wages. They get, say, $2,000 and immediately 30 percent goes on housing and 11 percent on taxes. Forty-odd percent of their earnings have gone already.

We are used to this or that being free, and people do not see their wages anyway. Now, if they were to receive them in full and pay for everything themselves, then it would be a completely different matter.

Apart from this, what does receiving housing as property mean? It means that people have received property: One person, two, or many. That is how market relations appear in society. So far, this does not exist here, but the question probably must be considered properly.

[A.A. Tokminov, leader of Uralmash's mixed-skill team] workers' initiative and their labor vigor and fervor have declined significantly here