Days Off

weekly days of rest. In the USSR manual and office workers with a five-day workweek are granted two days off per week, as a rule Saturday and Sunday, and those employees with a six-day workweek are given one day off, as a rule Sunday. In firms that operate continuously, workers have days off by turns on different days according to a schedule. The duration of the weekly rest period must be not less than 42 consecutive hours. In those cases when days off coincide with holidays, other days off are not granted. Work is prohibited on days off. Enlisting the services of individual manual or office workers on days off is allowed only with the permission of factory, plant, or local trade union committees and only in exceptional cases as determined by the laws of Union republics. Under no circumstances does the firm’s administration have the right to abolish or postpone days off for the enterprise as a whole. Workers whose services are enlisted on their days off are given another day off (compensatory leave) in the course of the next two weeks. If it is impossible to provide compensatory leave—in connection with the dismissal of a manual or office worker or in other cases as stipulated by law—then the payment for work on days off is double the usual rate. Manual and office workers under 18 years of age, pregnant women, nursing mothers, and women with infants less than one year of age may not be enlisted to work on their days off.