Topical issues of labor at the concession enterprises in the USSR

In the 1920s in the USSR the total number of workers and employees at the concession enterprises did not exceed 0,7 % from the total number of ones in the country. Sometimes requirements about distribution of the Soviet labor law on all employees of the concession enterprise, irrespective of their nationality or citizenship, caused protests from foreign concessionaires. Economic interests often were behind those protests. Sometimes the Soviet partners made a compromise. The problem of a percentage ratio of the Soviet and foreign workers on concessions was an important one. In contracts, the number of foreigners usually was defined as 1020 percentage (often 15 %) from each category of skilled workers. In the Far East of the USSR, the percent of attracted foreign labor was higher (4550 percentage of foreign workers and above). Specific weight of foreign employees at the concession enterprises officially could reach 50 %. There were many so-called «the former people» at the concession enterprises (representatives of the former bourgeoisie, the nobility, clergy, merchants and officers). Because of their origin, they could not get lob at the state enterprises. That is why in the 1920s at some concession enterprises of the USSR there were 30-35 % of workers with the higher education and 50-60 % with a secondary one. However, such high educational level of workers could take place only at the concession enterprises that were settling down in Moscow, Leningrad or in especially large industrial and cultural centers of the European part of the USSR. As a rule, almost at all concessions the average monthly salaries were higher, than at the one-branch state enterprises. For example, at peak of the Soviet concession practice (in 1928), the difference in salaries fluctuated from one to 60 % and tended to increase.