Employment of Engineering and Technical Workers at Industrial Enterprises of Leningrad in 1928–1937

Abstract

During the first five-year plans, the country's leadership paid special attention to providing industrial enterprises with qualified personnel, primarily engineers and technicians. Until now, the problem of employing specialists has remained poorly understood. Meanwhile, the study of this issue makes it possible not only to draw a conclusion about the extent to which the distribution of qualified personnel was the exclusive sphere of state activity, but also to evaluate the results of this process. The article attempts to analyze the practice of hiring engineering and technical workers at industrial enterprises in Leningrad in 1928–1937. The execution by the labor exchange and the bodies of the People's Commissariat of Labor of requests from factories and factories, the targeted transfer of qualified personnel from management departments to the production sector, as well as the distribution of graduates of universities, colleges and technical schools are considered as the main ways to meet the needs of industrial enterprises of Leningrad in engineering. technical workers. Since none of these methods solved the personnel problem, the practice of “luring” qualified personnel from one enterprise to another became widespread. Economic organizations (trusts and production associations, factories and factories) had a significant influence on the distribution of personnel. Not least was the role of the engineering and technical workers themselves, who had the opportunity to terminate the employment contract unilaterally. As a result, the system of hiring qualified personnel worked, rather, to redistribute engineering and technical workers between enterprises and contributed not to stabilizing the personnel situation, but to increasing the mobility of specialists.