Tariff System under Socialism, a planned form for organising and regulating wages and salaries (see Wages under Socialism) depending on the worker’s labour input. With the help of the tariff system the socialist state takes into account the difference between skilled and unskilled, light and heavy work, the degree of intensity and social significance of work, and on this basis determines how much should be paid for it. This is how the economic law of distribution according to work done and the workers’ material interest in developing social production are realised. The tariff system consists of wage rate and skills handbooks, rate scales (for workers) and a system of salaries (for engineers, technicians, and office workers); wage rates and regional mark-ups to wages. In the Soviet Union, all the components of the tariff system are worked out in a centralised way. The rate and skills handbook describes jobs of all kinds as to their complexity, importance and difficulty, with mention of the category to which a particular job corresponds, as well as requirements concerning the knowledge and experience the worker must possess in order to carry out a given job. The handbook is used in rating work and assigning workers to skill categories. The scale of rates consists of tariff coefficients and tariff grades providing the basis on which the ratios of payment for work of different skills is determined. The tariff coefficient shows by how much the wage rate in a higher grade tops that of the first grade. The wage rate of the first grade determines how much is paid for carrying out a given job of the first grade. The wage rate in subsequent categories is determined by multiplying the wage rate in the first grade by the corresponding wage coefficient. Today in Soviet industry (engineering, timber, oil, wood-processing, textile, garment, footwear, food and other branches) six-grade scales are mainly used. The range between the lowest and highest rates in the manufacturing branches of heavy industry is 1 : 2, in light and the food industries—1 : 1.8. The work of engineers, technicians and office employees is paid for on the basis of differentiated monthly salaries and 352 wages. Every post has a certain maximum and minimum wage bracket. This makes it possible to ensure that payment for work corresponds to its results and creates incentive to make it more efficient. Different economic and climatic conditions in the Soviet Union, the need to attract workers to sparsely populated and remote regions and settle them there calls for a differentiation of wages in different regions. This is where regional coefficients to tariff rates step in.