Professional Mobility and Improvement of the Structure of the Industrial Workforce

Occupational Mobility and Improvement of the Structure of the Industrial Workforce

L. F. Pysin, K. N. Chigoryaev

(Presented by the scientific seminar of the Department of Political Economy)

In the resolutions of the Twenty-Third Congress of the CPSU, special attention is devoted to accelerating scientific and technological progress and increasing the efficiency of social production as the most important economic and political task¹.

Under conditions of rapid technical progress and the scientific-and-technological revolution that has begun, the efficiency of social production is determined to a significant degree by the extent to which the occupational and skill structure of the workforce reflects changes in the technical base of production. The structural factor in the growth of the efficiency of social production is becoming increasingly important. The growth of production in our country in recent years, as studies by Soviet economists show, has to a significant extent occurred through sectoral structural shifts in the distribution of labor power in the national economy, and therefore through changes in the occupational and skill composition of workers.

The improvement of the structure of the workforce is ensured by the occupational mobility of workers inherent in modern large-scale machine production.

K. Marx, characterizing the development of large-scale machine industry, showed that “it constantly revolutionizes the technical basis of production, and with it the functions of the workers and the social combinations of the labor process. Thus it also constantly revolutionizes the division of labor within society and incessantly throws masses of capital and masses of workers from one branch of production into another. Therefore pri—

...of large-scale industry gives rise to a change of labor, the movement of functions, and the all-round mobility of the worker”².

An element of the all-round mobility of workers is the professional-qualification mobility of the labor force, by means of which the structure of personnel is adapted to the changing needs of production, and its adequacy to the structure of the material elements of the productive forces is achieved. At the same time, the structure of the labor force becomes more progressive; within it, the share of the most productive professions and specialties requiring high qualifications increases, while the possibilities for the all-round development of the personality of working people steadily expand.

Planned management of the professional mobility of personnel is an essential means of increasing the efficiency of socialist production. Planned professional-qualification mobility of the working personnel is an economic category of socialism, expressing the concrete dependence of the reproduction of the labor force on technical progress and structural shifts in the economy.

In recent years, the problem of the professional-qualification mobility of personnel has been receiving ever greater attention in the works of Soviet economists. However, many aspects of professional mobility have been insufficiently studied. Meanwhile, the revolutionary character and dynamism of modern large-scale machine production are turning the mobility of workers into an indispensable condition of economic and social progress. Planned improvement of the structure of the labor force is often hampered by the insufficient study of this process and by the undeveloped state of the mechanism for its regulation.

Professional mobility is studied by us with reference to the aggregate worker. Such an approach required revealing the professional-qualification structure and investigating its dynamics. As a result, it became possible to detect changes in the ratio of the various professional functions of the aggregate worker, which constitutes the internal content of the process of professional mobility. Professional mobility is expressed not only in a change in the list of professions, but is also reflected in the dynamics of the number and relative weight of professional groups united by one or another common feature (the level of mechanization of labor, the complexity of labor, the commonality of technological operations, etc.). The greatest opportunities for research of this kind are provided by the materials of one-time censuses of the occupational composition of the working personnel.

The social division of labor is a complex socio-economic category, appearing on its material side as the structure of the productive forces (the organic mode of their development), and as a form of social production. The main tendencies in the development of the social division of labor are directly conditioned by technical progress, changes in the means and objects of labor, in technology, and in the cultural and technical level of working people. At the same time, the social division of labor, on its social side, is under the determining influence of property relations (property relations). Therefore, the division of labor and its changes are always connected with the position

social groups in society and their interests. The development of the social division of labor therefore is not a simple process reflecting shifts in the development of the productive forces.

Within the system of the social division of labor, the professional division occupies a special place. This form of the social division of labor most directly reflects all changes in the technique and technology of production, being the most dynamic element of this system. The professional division of labor is connected with the specialization of the means of production, with workers’ being assigned labor functions of a certain quality and complexity, and finds expression in the concrete occupational-qualification structure of personnel.

A condition for the high efficiency of social production is the flexibility and adequacy of the occupational-qualification structure of the labor force to the structure of the material factors of production. The indicated adequacy is ensured, on the one hand, by the relative stability of its elements and, on the other hand, by all forms of occupational and qualification mobility. The connection between technical progress and the division of labor is expressed in the comprehensive mobility of personnel and, above all, in their occupational and qualification movement.

Under conditions of rapid technical progress and fundamental structural shifts in the economy, occupational-qualification mobility assumes ever greater importance. The variety of forms and directions of technical progress gives rise to a variety of forms of occupational and qualification mobility:

1) an increase in the number and relative weight of occupations and specialties of mechanized (automated) labor;

2) the dying out of a number of traditional occupations caused by the old division of labor, and the appearance of new occupations brought about by the most modern directions of technical progress;

3) an increase in the role of broad-profile occupations and an increase in their relative weight in the occupational composition of workers;

4) growth in the number of workers engaged in setting up, repairing, and servicing machines and equipment;

5) a decrease in the attachment of occupations to particular branches and an increase in the role of “cross-cutting occupations”;

6) an increase in the average level of labor complexity and growth in the relative weight of skilled and highly skilled workers;

7) the combination of occupations, specialties, and labor functions on the basis of improving the forms of division and cooperation of labor, etc.

The acceleration of technical progress and the social development of society leads to an increase in the occupational-qualification mobility of personnel. This process can be quantitatively determined with the aid of the coefficient of occupational turnover and the coefficient of qualification growth.

The coefficient of occupational turnover for the entire national economy, first calculated by M. Ya. Sonin, is defined as the ratio of the number of all trained workers in new occupations (excluding those who received such training but remained working in their former occupation) to the increase in the number of skilled workers. The named coefficient amounted in the preceding...

the wartime period, 1.3; in 1946–1955, 1.5; in 1951–1955, 2; in 1956–1960, 2.3; in 1961–1964, 2.6³.

The coefficient of skill growth, calculated by us as the ratio of the number of workers and employees who upgraded their qualifications to the total annual increase in workers and employees, was: in 1946, 1.2; in 1950, 1.8; in 1960, 3.2; in 1966, 3.6⁴.

Thus, there is an acceleration of occupational-skill mobility, especially in recent years.

The growth of occupational-skill mobility is taking place both in developed capitalist countries and in socialist countries. However, the mechanism, the form of realization, and the social consequences are different.

In socialist society the process of occupational-skill mobility becomes subject to planned regulation. The improvement of the structure of the labor force affects the interests of particular groups of working people and presupposes influence upon them with the aim of properly combining social and personal interests in the choice of occupation.

If capitalism is characterized by an antagonism between the economic and social criteria of change in the occupational structure, then in socialist society there exist foundations for their internal unity. Under socialism the goal of production is the fullest possible satisfaction of needs and the all-round development of the members of society. From the standpoint of its correspondence to the material factors of production, the occupational-skill structure of personnel appears as a means of achieving the goal of socialist production, since it contributes to increasing its efficiency. From the standpoint of the correspondence of the occupational-skill structure to the tasks of the all-round development of the individual, it may be regarded as a goal of social production.

Thus, the optimal occupational-skill structure of personnel must simultaneously correspond to the criteria of economic as well as social progress. Socialism creates fundamentally new socio-economic conditions for accelerating the all-round mobility of personnel.

The implementation of measures that accelerate occupational and skill mobility presupposes the priority of nationwide socio-economic interests. Only in this case can the current economic interests of the enterprise be properly combined with the profound socio-economic interests of society as a whole. Conscious management of the process of occupational and skill mobility is built on the basis of knowledge of its regularities, forms, specific features, and contradictions.

Occupational mobility unfolds in reality on the basis of a concrete occupational-skill structure.

The occupational and skill division of labor finds real expression in the concrete occupational-skill structure of the workforce. The essence of this structure consists in the fact that each participant in production, occupying

a definite place in the system of the social division of labor, being included in the production process in a specific capacity. The commonality of the qualitative characteristics of one or another group of workers unites them into groups which, taken together, form the occupational-and-skill structure^5).

The occupational-and-skill structure is a system of the distribution of workers by type, branch, and kind of labor activity and by complexity of labor. This distribution is not mechanical; it is connected with the worker’s occupation, specialty, and skill level, which presuppose a definite level of knowledge, skills, and production experience.

The place occupied in the occupational structure should correspond, to the greatest possible extent, both to a person’s abilities and to the level and profile of his training. It follows from this that the formation of the occupational-and-skill structure is carried out in accordance with the needs of production and with due account of the interests of the workers themselves.

The occupational structure, as a form of distributing producers by types and kinds of activity, is characterized by a number of general features under both capitalism and socialism. Therefore the quantitative characteristics of this structure in different systems of social production can be compared. At the same time, the character of the formation and improvement of the occupational-and-skill structure, and the social consequences of its change, are wholly determined by the prevailing relations of ownership. Therefore, the processes of change in the occupational-and-skill structure cannot be understood apart from the concrete form of economic relations.

In Capital, K. Marx repeatedly emphasized the subordination of the occupational structure to the interests of capital and the specifically capitalist methods of its formation and development.

Under socialism, the unity of the economic interests of society and the individual eliminates the antagonistic contradictions in the development of the occupational-and-skill structure of workers.

The occupational-and-skill structure, which is always the totality of the elements composing it at each stage of the development of production, receives a concrete form of expression. One should distinguish between macro- and microstructure. The former characterizes the distribution of workers by kinds of activity on the scale of the entire national economy; the latter, on the scale of a branch or enterprise. A concrete characterization of the structure may be more detailed or less detailed depending on the grouping criterion chosen. The most detailed description of the occupational-and-skill structure is the accounting of workers by occupations and specialties. However, depending on the purpose of the study, more generalized groupings may be used to describe the structure. Various features are laid at the basis of such groupings (the feature of mechanization of labor, the degree of complexity of labor, relation to the stages of the technological process, working conditions, etc.). For example, the entire composition of an enterprise’s workers is subdivided into production and non-production personnel. Among production workers, depending on the nature of the functions actually performed, the following are distinguished—

^5) See in K. Marx’s Capital: “Each separate group, a certain number of workers performing one and the same... function, consists of homogeneous elements and forms a special organ of the aggregate mechanism” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 23, p. 359).

categories: workers, engineering and technical personnel, employees, junior service personnel, watch and fire guards⁵).

In terms of their structure, industrial-production workers are divided into primary and auxiliary (including service) workers, which is determined by the functional approach, i.e., depending on the relation of the workers to the technological process⁶.

Primary workers include workers engaged directly in forming the product, which is carried out in the main technological processes, that is, in manufacturing the principal output of the enterprise intended for release outside it.

Auxiliary workers include workers performing auxiliary technological operations involving movement and transportation, those engaged in the storage and warehousing of objects and products of labor, technical quality control of products, the production of heat, steam, and electricity for the enterprise’s own needs, as well as workers repairing and adjusting machines, machine tools, equipment, construction repairs, etc.

Of great importance for analyzing the occupational structure is comparing it with the socio-demographic structure of the working personnel (sex, age, education, etc.). In this case, each functional group of employees is also characterized from the standpoint of its social and demographic attributes. Comparing the occupational and socio-demographic structures is especially important in studying the social aspects of improving the occupational composition.

The real occupational-qualification structure is described with the help of formal attributes established by the Labor Code, wage-rate and qualification handbooks, job descriptions, etc. All these attributes are to a certain extent conditional, since no classification can fully describe the complex system of the occupational-qualification division of labor. The function actually performed may differ, both in terms of qualification and in terms of occupational knowledge and skills, from the characteristic it receives in accounting and statistical documentation.

Improving the methods of assessing and recording the occupational composition of workers makes it possible to penetrate more deeply into its essence and dynamics. However, the issues of improving indicators of the occupational-qualification structure are the object of an independent study.

The development of the occupational structure of the working personnel, as of any other economic category, can be understood if it is considered with account taken of the determining influence of the basic economic law of socialism. However, the connection between the operation of the basic economic law of socialism and changes in the occupational structure of workers is mediated by technical progress. The indicated principle of studying the structure of workers on the materials of capitalist reality was used by K. Marx in Capital. In the first volume Marx writes: “Pro-

production of relative surplus value “revolutionizes through and through both the technical processes of labor and the social groupings”*). Here, by the term “social groupings,” K. Marx denotes the system of the social division of labor and its concrete expression: the social structure, which includes the occupational and qualification groupings of the workforce.

The occupational and qualification structure of workers is determined, therefore, by changes in technology, production techniques, and the structure of production.

The improvement of the structure of personnel is a consequence and condition of technical progress, and hence also of high production efficiency. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that a change in the structure of workers exerts a reverse, active influence on technical progress, since the working person is the primary productive force of society.

The more advanced the occupational structure, the more developed are the capacities of the aggregate worker, the more creative is his participation in production, and the more significant is his contribution to the progress of technology.

The interconnection and interdependence between the material elements and the structure of personnel, however, cannot be understood in the sense that the laws of their development are completely identical. Of course, the majority of the economic regularities of socialism affect equally the development of both the material and the personal factors of production; at the same time, the relative independence of these spheres presupposes the existence of specific regularities governing the development either only of the material factors or only of the personal factors of production. This means that certain discrepancies may arise between the development of technology and production techniques and changes in the occupational and qualification structure, reducing the efficiency of production. The elaboration of questions of technical policy and personnel policy must be carried out with due regard for the specific regularities of each sphere. In the field of technical policy, this proposition has been and is being taken into account. As for personnel policy, however, here it is clearly underestimated when designing measures for personnel training, upgrading qualifications, the distribution and redistribution of labor resources, and so on. Failure to take account of the specific regularities in the formation of the occupational and qualification structure may lead to elements of lack of planning and spontaneity, which contradicts the planned character of the development of the socialist economy.

Analysis of economic practice and the studies of Soviet labor economists make it possible to formulate a number of objective requirements that a rational occupational and qualification structure of the industrial workforce must meet. The correspondence of the occupational and qualification structure to these requirements makes it possible, to the greatest extent, to realize the principle of economic efficiency.

First of all, the occupational and qualification structure must be adequate to the structure of the material elements of production. This follows from the fact that every definite type of technical and technological process imposes specific requirements on the quantity and qualitative composition of the personnel serving it—

* K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 23, p. 518.

of the worker with his labor power. This adequacy is thought of both on the scale of the national economy, the branch, the economic region, and within the enterprise, down to and including the workplace. A disruption of the correspondence between the technical-technological and personal factors of production leads to underutilization either of production capacities or of the labor power itself.

In practice, insufficient account is taken, for example, of the connection between the branch structure of labor and the structure of fixed assets. It is known, for example, that the stock of metal-cutting machine tools at the beginning of 1965 numbered 2.5 million units in our country, including about 1.7 million in machine building and metalworking. The number of all metal machine-tool workers, however, was only about 1.34 million persons⁷. A similar discrepancy can also be found in analyzing the microstructure of a branch and of enterprises. Thus, in 1959–1964, 208 thousand drilling machines were produced in the USSR, while in 1965 there were only 86.6 thousand drillers⁸.

Continuous technical progress and progressive structural shifts in the economy require that the occupational-qualification structure of workers possess sufficient flexibility and adaptability to the changing needs of production. K. Marx wrote: “When the general conditions of production corresponding to large-scale industry have been established, machine production acquires elasticity, … the capacity for rapid, leap-like expansion”⁹.

As a result of technical progress, the need for certain functions, occupations, and specialties diminishes or disappears; a need arises for new functions, occupations, and specialties. The requirements for the level of skill also change. The occupational structure of workers must respond flexibly to these requirements so that the effect of new equipment and technology is not nullified by an obsolete system of occupational division of labor. Flexibility and adaptability lead to its transformation into an increasingly progressive occupational-qualification structure. The progressiveness of the structure is determined by the share of workers in the most productive occupations of highly skilled labor. The criterion of a progressive structure is the assurance of growth in the productivity of social labor. In the last decade, owing to improvement in the structure of workers, a significant part of the increase in labor productivity was secured at the expense of the structural factor.

If, for example, the amount of net output per employed person in 1962 is calculated according to the labor-force structure of 1940, it turns out that the amount of net output is only 76.3% of the actual output of 1962, and according to the labor-force structure of 1938, 88.1%¹⁰. The growth of net output in these years occurred to a significant degree because of branch structural shifts in the distribution of labor power in the national economy, and to a considerable extent because of changes in the occupational-qualification composition of workers.

Analysis of a mass of economic-statistical material has made it possible to identify the main tendencies of the occupational-qualification mobility of workers at the present stage of development.

Of particular importance is the study of the occupational structure from the standpoint of the mechanization of labor. The general tendency for all branches of industry is an absolute and relative increase in the number of those employed in occupations and specialties involving mechanized labor, and a decline in the share of manual-labor occupations. In addition, it should be emphasized that the proportion of workers engaged in repair, adjustment, and setting-up of equipment is increasing. The number of workers operating automatic machines and automated installations is growing rapidly, although the share of these occupations remains within one percent of the total number of industrial-production workers.

The occupational structure of workers has specific features in groups employed at different stages of the technological process.

The structure of workers employed in the operations of the main technological process is characterized by a high proportion of mechanized-labor occupations. The prevailing tendency here is a decline in the number and share of manual workers. However, even in basic production there are still considerable opportunities—especially in assembly and installation work—for increasing the proportion of mechanized occupations.

The most substantial changes should occur in the structure of workers employed in auxiliary technological operations: the transportation and movement of loads, technical quality control of products, sorting, filling, packing and warehouse work, in the power-service departments of industrial enterprises, as well as in the production of repairs of machines, machine tools, and equipment, the adjustment and lubrication of machines and instruments, and the performance of construction and installation work.

The absolutely growing need for workers engaged in physical manual labor comes into contradiction with the increased general educational and cultural level of the younger generation, which is placing ever higher demands on the content of occupational labor.

Occupational mobility proceeds unevenly in different demographic groups. For example, the level of mechanization of women’s labor systematically lags behind the level of mechanization of the labor of male workers. According to our calculations, during the period from 1959 to 1965 the share of men engaged in manual labor fell from 51.8 to 46.9%, while the corresponding indicator for women rose from 48.2 to 53.1%. As a result, certain social problems of women’s labor did not find a proper solution. Planned regulation of occupational mobility is intended to eliminate this contradiction and to take fuller account not only of the technical-economic but also of the social aspects of improving the occupational structure.

The very rapid growth of certain occupational groups—for example, repair workers (in the industry of Sverdlovsk oblast, over the surveyed period from 1959 to 1965, the number of repair workers increased by 51.9%, while the total number of workers increased by 17.6%)—is connected with the shortcomings of those organizational forms within which occupational mobility is carried out. The dispersal of repair services and the absence of the necessary centralization lead to an unjustified expansion of these occupational groups.

The problem of improving the occupational structure of wor—

the workforce cannot be solved by the efforts of individual enterprises alone. Many issues presuppose the adoption of centralized decisions at the level of an industry or of the entire national economy—for example, the restructuring of repair production, and the separation into special specialized branches of a number of technological processes scattered among individual enterprises and carried out in a semi-handicraft manner.

Occupational mobility is closely intertwined with changes in the skill structure of the workforce. The study of skill mobility is intended to identify prospects for the development of levels of labor complexity and the main trends in changes in the skill composition of workers.

Of particular interest is the study of changes in the level of workers’ skills in USSR industry after the introduction of the new tariff grids, i.e., since 1962, since in this period greater comparability of the data is ensured.

Analysis shows that in USSR industry in 1965 the share of low-skilled and unskilled workers, compared with 1962, decreased by 1.6%. The share of skilled workers did not change, while that of highly skilled workers increased by 1.5%.

Improvement in the structure of industrial production contributes to a significant extent to the rise in the skill level of workers. In progressive branches, the processes of mechanization and automation of production are carried out at higher rates. Here, as a rule, the skill level of workers is higher than in other branches.

The distribution of workers by skill level is characterized by unevenness not only among branches but also among economic regions. For example, when comparing the skill levels of workers in machine building and metalworking in the European and Asian (including the Urals) parts of the RSFSR, it turns out that the share of unskilled workers in the European part in 1965 was 76, of low-skilled workers 96, of skilled workers 107, and of highly skilled workers 145% in relation to the corresponding skill groups of workers in the Urals, Siberia, and the Far East.

The revealed features of the skill structure of the workforce in the country’s eastern regions are connected, in particular, with high labor turnover, as well as with shortcomings in the organization of training skilled workers for the industry of the eastern regions. The acceleration of skill mobility in the eastern regions of the country is the most important condition for the development of new capacities and the growth of production efficiency.

The rise in the skill level of workers and the increase in the share of highly skilled contingents, while being an expression of skill mobility, does not contain a criterion that would make it possible to evaluate this process economically.

In our view, the economic criterion may be the ratio between the grade of work and the grade of workers. A reduction in the gap between them indicates the success of efforts to improve the skill structure of personnel.

Data obtained in a survey of a number of machine-building enterprises in Sverdlovsk show that during the period from 1964 to 1967 at all the plants surveyed the level of quali-

the qualifications of workers rose at higher rates than the level of complexity of the work.

However, the level of complexity of work at enterprises still remains, as a rule, higher than the qualifications of workers, and this very substantial gap requires an acceleration in the growth of the qualifications of industrial workers.

An analysis of the occupational and skill mobility of the workforce fully confirms F. Engels’s prediction, who wrote that for the transition to communism “mechanical and chemical aids alone are not enough. It is also necessary correspondingly to develop the abilities of the people who set these aids in motion”¹¹. Therefore, in order to increase the efficiency of social production, it is necessary to strengthen the planned regulation of this process, taking into account the real occupational structure, the objective tendencies of its development, and the internal contradictions.

This regulation presupposes the identification of technological processes and operations whose mechanization presents no technical difficulties and depends primarily on organizational and economic measures. Here lies the largest reserve for improving the structure of personnel. At the same time, it is necessary to define the range of occupations and specialties for which the questions of mechanizing labor, at the present level of technological development, have not yet been resolved. State assignments for the development of means of mechanizing labor functions of this kind would make it possible to substantially accelerate the improvement of the occupational structure of industrial workers.

The regional aspect of skill mobility deserves great attention—namely, the creation of the necessary conditions ensuring an acceleration in the growth of the qualifications of industrial workers in the eastern regions of the country.

One of the most important tasks of social planning is to accelerate the occupational mobility of women workers, which would make it possible to reduce the use of female labor in non-mechanized operations.

Occupational and skill mobility, as an expression of the progressive tendencies of modern large-scale machine production, must be regarded as an independent indicator of the effective use of living labor. Therefore, it seems rational to develop special coefficients characterizing the rates and level of occupational and skill mobility of workers at enterprises and in branches of industry. The evaluation of the effectiveness of particular forms of vocational and technical training should include, as an independent criterion, the speed of occupational and skill advancement.

Measures to improve the occupational and skill structure will not achieve their goal if they are not based on effective economic incentives and on taking into account the economic and social interests of working people. From this point of view, the economic reform creates the most favorable conditions for combining the efforts of the state, sectoral bodies, and individual enterprises in order to optimize the structure of the workforce and substantially increase the efficiency of social production.

1. Materials of the Twenty-Third Congress of the CPSU. Politizdat, Moscow, 1966, p. 44. ↩

2. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 23, p. 498. ↩

3. See Economic Regularities of the Transition from Socialism to Communism. Nauka, Moscow, 1967, pp. 303–304. ↩

4. Calculated on the basis of data from the statistical collection Labor in the USSR, Statistika, Moscow, 1968, pp. 22, 322. ↩

5. See Labor Economics, ed. by A. S. Kudryavtsev. Textbook. “Ekonomika,” Moscow, 1967, p. 144. ↩

6. Underlying the indicated functional (technological) division of labor is the classification of labor given by K. Marx in the first volume of Capital. ↩

7. See: Vestnik statistiki, 1966, No. 6, p. 91. ↩

8. See: Voprosy ekonomiki, 1968, No. 9, p. 131. ↩

9. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 23, p. 461. ↩

10. See: Struktura narodnogo khozyaistva SSSR [The Structure of the National Economy of the USSR]. Nauka, Moscow, 1967, p. 196. ↩

11. K. Marx and F. Engels, Works, vol. 4, p. 335. ↩