Staggerers Unstaggered

Staggerers Unstagegered

Russia, which switched two years ago from the seven to the five-day week, switched last week to the six.

Starting Dec. 1, 1931 Soviet weeks will end on the 6th, 12th, 18th, 24th and 30th days of each month, which will be holidays. Twelve such 30-day months add up to 360 days. Inserting five special Red holidays between the months pads out the year to 365 days. An extra special holiday will take care of leap year.

Ruefully Soviet leaders admitted last week that the "staggered" five-day weeks proved a brake on production instead of a spur. The idea was that machines would run every day, tended by four-fifths of the workers. Each day one-fifth of the proletariat would rest, next day another fifth, and so on, but machines never.

In practice Soviet factories found that if machines do not "rest" once a week and receive a weekly tuning-up they break down, wear out at an alarming rate. Factory executives found that on their free day the assistants left in charge fell down on their executives' jobs. Bitterly an in dividual worker would complain: "Four days of the week my friends find that I am not at home and on the fifth day I find that they are not at home."

In only one respect the five-day week was an unqualified success, from the Soviet point of view. It did help to make people forget Sunday. The new six-day week will be unstaggered, exactly like a capital ist seven-day week, but its holiday will seldom fall on Sunday. Thus Soviet officials, determined atheists, feel that they have smartly evolved the next most irreligious thing to a staggered five-day week.

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