Young Specialists

Soviet labor law specifically regulates the employment of persons graduating from higher and specialized secondary educational institutions. These young specialists are personally registered through the appropriate ministries and government agencies. The regulation of their working conditions is intended to assure their proper utilization in the interests of the national economy of the USSR.

Upon graduation from an educational institution, young specialists are obligated for three years of production work in their acquired specialty. Young specialists selected for study by an enterprise, construction project, sovkhoz or kolkhoz must be reassigned to their original organizations upon completion of studies. Their legal status is defined through general labor legislation, with some exceptions and additions. All young specialists assigned to work upon graduation from an educational institution are granted a month’s leave before starting work. During this leave a young specialist who has been receiving a stipend is paid an allowance in the amount of one month’s stipend out of the funds of the organization to which he has been assigned for work.

Enterprise directors are obliged to provide such specialists with housing and to create the conditions necessary for their work, everyday life, acquisition of practical experience, and further enhancement of professional qualifications. It is prohibited to utilize young specialists in the administrative apparatus or in work unconnected with their specialty or to dismiss them without the permission of the agency to which the enterprise is subordinate. At the initiative of the assigned specialist, the work relationship may be terminated prior to the required three years, upon the same grounds and following the same procedure by which any labor contract concluded for a fixed period is dissolved before completion. Young specialists who have completed their training through evening or correspondence courses must receive priority in transfer to work related to their specialization and qualifications.

Working conditions of young specialists are regulated under a decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated May 9, 1963(Collected Decrees of the USSR, 1963, no. 8, art. 89) and through the Statute on the Personal Placement of Young Specialists Completing Higher and Specialized Secondary Educational Institutions of the USSR, enacted on Mar. 18, 1968(Biulleten ’Ministerstva vysshego i srednego obrazovaniia SSSR, 1968, no. 6).