Chapter 7 2.2 Financial work is second only to the military

Entering the city from the countryside, the complex doorways in the enterprise make people feel difficult. Chen Yun said that he has not yet learned to be a "boss", and advocates that financial work be placed in an important position not inferior to the military or only second to the military, and stable prices are the economy. Recovery creates the conditions.However, modern industry is a complex and comprehensive system. Whether industrial production can resume normal production as soon as possible depends not only on the machine, but more importantly on the human factor. It depends on the management of the operator and the labor skills and work attitude of the producer.

Chen Yun felt that this question was not optimistic. On July 5, when discussing the issues of enterprise organization and labor movement policy at the Northeast Bureau Standing Committee meeting, Chen Yun pointed out that the old production system should be critically accepted in view of the chaos in the management of these enterprises.For factories, the most important issue is to find the source of raw materials and the sale of finished products.Now, we haven't learned to be the "boss" How to be the "boss" of modern industry?After Chen Yun took office, he set out to solve the three most urgent problems: first, workers’ wages were too low, and production emotions were disturbed; There is no overall plan for the economy, and blind production causes losses.

The first thing that needs to be solved urgently is the issue of workers' wages.This problem is extremely prominent in the case of soaring food prices.The increase in food prices is equivalent to a reduction in the wages of workers who receive monetary wages, which affects their ability to support their families.As a result, some workers resigned and became hawkers, and skilled workers were lost from public enterprises to private enterprises. Chen Yun is well aware of the urgency of this issue, and advocates solving the problem of workers' underpaid treatment, and immediately began to adjust it. On June 16, Chen Yun pointed out at the regular meeting of the Northeast Bureau: The current wages of railway and factory workers are too low to maintain a minimum living standard, and they are not as good as farm laborers in the countryside.It will not work for a long time according to the current method, which will exploit the workers and benefit the consumers, and the result will be the general collapse of the industry.The economics must always be done in accordance with economic principles, and the use of coercion violates both economic principles and political principles.

According to Chen Yun's opinion, the Northeast Finance and Economics Department re-established a new wage standard based on the physical object as the unit of measurement.In the new salary standard, the maximum salary of workers is increased to 375 catties of grain in real terms, which is a full increase of 100 catties of grain. Although it is lower than that of the old Republic of China and the Puppet Manchukuo period, the workers with the highest wages can support themselves, including themselves. A family of four and a half adults can support a family of three and a half adults with a medium salary.

In the new salary standard, the wages of engineering technicians and managers are much higher than that of workers, and the wages of ordinary employees are also equal to those of workers.Doing so, politically speaking, was not easy at the time.This cannot fail to talk about the contradictions between workers and employees in enterprises. After the Communist Party of China entered the Northeast, it took over many large-scale and technologically advanced enterprises, such as railways, mines, power stations, post and telecommunications, light and heavy industrial factories, and municipal enterprises.In these enterprises, there are not only a lot of physical workers, but also a lot of mental workers.

Originally, workers and employees were both hired laborers of Japanese invaders and Kuomintang government enterprises.However, workers and employees at all levels have different status within the enterprise and in society.Workers had the harshest working conditions and the lowest pay in Japanese invaders and Kuomintang government enterprises.The working conditions and living conditions of lower-level employees are close to those of workers, but many of them have the consciousness that old intellectuals despise workers.Middle and senior staff are the production and business managers of the enterprise, and they occupy the status of managers for workers and junior staff.Some management personnel, under the command and oppression system of the Japanese invaders and the reactionary Kuomintang rule, are used to managing workers with bureaucratic methods.

Under the old production order, workers and employees have accumulated deep conflicts for a long time.Before Japan surrendered, all senior staff and a section of mid-level staff in Northeast enterprises were Japanese.After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Chinese personnel replaced the Japanese.Workers are more or less dissatisfied with the general management personnel; they hate a small number of evildoers.The political sensitivity of this issue is something that no one can ignore. The difficulty of the work is no less than that of raising the wages of the workers. At the beginning of 1948, the Hegang Coal Mine made a "Left" mistake of inappropriately attacking employees among mobilized workers, which had a great impact.What happened in Hegang is not an isolated phenomenon. Jixi and Xi'an coal mines and individual sections of the railway have also happened.Due to the lack of experience in modern enterprise management, cadres have misconceptions about the views of the working class and the mass line, and there is a general tendency to look down on technicians and managers.

The operation of modern enterprises is not as some cadres imagined, and it is enough for someone to start the machine.It requires managers, engineers and technicians, and other staff to organize and cooperate with workers organically in order to produce smoothly.Treating employees as objects of struggle will inevitably disrupt the normal production organization and necessary production order and affect production. After Chen Yun presided over the financial work, he took the mistake of Hegang Coal Mine as an opportunity to check the correct treatment of employees. Through inspection and analysis, Chen Yun believes that there are both right and left mistakes in dealing with employees.The mistakes of the right are manifested in over-reliance on the old staff and insufficient attention to the workers.Therefore, it is impossible to inspire the enthusiasm of workers, and it is also difficult to educate and transform old employees, which hinders the improvement of productivity and the transformation of enterprises. "Left" mistakes are manifested in only emphasizing workers, despising employees, lack of analysis of employees, and indiscriminate attacks, forming antagonism between workers and employees, which will destroy the unity of employees, and the final result will inevitably hinder production and endanger enterprises. .But he realized more clearly: "The mistakes of the right or the 'left' in the policy of the staff, especially the mistakes of the 'left'. The main reason is the underestimation of the role of the staff, especially the administrative personnel. This is a common problem among all new recruits."

In order to solve the staff problem from a policy perspective, Chen Yun drafted a decision for the Northeast Bureau. On July 9, the Northeast Bureau sent the draft decision to the Central Committee, and the Central Committee replied to the Northeast Bureau the next day, saying that "this decision is very good." On August 1, the Northeast Bureau issued the "Decision on the Issue of Employees in Public Enterprises". Apparently, Chen Yun devoted himself to solving wage standards and dealing with conflicts between workers and employees, and finally implemented them based on production and established normal enterprise management and business order.

On August 3rd and 4th, Chen Yun made a report on "The General Task of the Current Chinese Workers' Movement" at the Sixth National Labor Conference, and proposed: To improve the operation and management of state-owned and public-owned enterprises, the main thing is to implement the principle of enterprise and democratize management.Only by effectively improving the operation and management can we achieve the goals of sufficient raw materials, low cost, good quality, large output and wide sales. How can this be done?Chen Yun pointed out that to manage a factory and operate a factory, the first thing to do is to be an enterprise.A factory is not an institution, nor is it an army. To open a factory should be like opening a factory. There must be economic accounting, cost assessment, and calculation of raw material and machine consumption.How much does it cost?How many raw materials are needed?How much does the machine consume?What price?You must be able to settle accounts.There must also be a system for employing people, based on ability and technology, and on the basis of competence and incompetence. It must be capable and reasonable.In order to run the factory well, everyone needs to act in accordance with the charter. There must be factory rules in the factory, and there must be various individual responsibility systems.There must also be inspections, whether the finished product is good or bad, the workmanship is good or bad, and the management is good or bad.To do otherwise would be to encourage bad work styles and condone backwardness, which would be detrimental to our cause.

Chen Yun reminded everyone that our comrades in the liberated areas can only be politicians and military strategists, not entrepreneurs.We are experts in making revolution, but we are laymen in running factories, so we need to learn from all experts in it. In the past, all the base areas in the customs were in backward villages, and the financial economy was to a large extent a self-sufficient natural economy.The modern industrial economy in Northeast China is a kind of socialized mass production.For the early recovery of the Northeast economy, it is important to strive for the normal operation of enterprises, but the planning of macro management is more important. With the expansion of the Northeast's industrial recovery, the proportion of industry in the economy is increasing, and because of the relationship between state-owned enterprises (here refers to enterprises operated by governments above the provincial level in liberated areas), state-owned enterprises and state-owned enterprises in various provinces, cities, and counties Between public enterprises and private enterprises, although there are production plans for each factory and some processing and ordering relations, as a whole, there is still a lack of planning in industry, which makes raw materials, machines, personnel, production and sales Wait, there is a lack of adjustment and connection, resulting in waste and loss. While Chen Yun is considering the resumption of normal production and operation of the enterprise from the micro level, he is also actively considering the issue of strengthening planning from the macro level. In August, Chen Yun reported in writing to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China: The Northeast Bureau decided that the industrial production plan for 1949 must be formulated this year, and if possible, the production plan for 1949 and 1950 should be further drawn up so that we can learn and move towards planned production.To this end, it is first necessary to formulate the production plans of state-owned enterprises, and secondly to formulate the production directions and plans of state-owned enterprises in the provinces, cities, and counties.In addition to these state-run and public-owned enterprises, it is necessary to investigate the situation of joint ventures and private factories in order to give guidance on the direction of production and implement order processing under possible conditions. In the report, Chen Yun also stated to the central government that there is still a strong blindness in the work of Dongbei Finance and Economics to this day.The reasons are, first, that the scope of financial and economic work is expanding and complicated, and we have no experience; second, that we have concentrated our efforts on the war and land reform in the past two years, and have not thoroughly explored financial and economic issues.We have realized that, under the current circumstances, "financial and economic work needs to be placed in an important position not inferior to or only inferior to the military."