I don't have stats to back me up on this, but anecdotally there certainly were pay differentials based on job type and seniority. However they were very small by comparison with capitalist countries. (Another big difference obviously being that working class jobs were generally higher paid than intelligentsia-type jobs.)
It's another matter that the relatively egalitarian pay level system actually doesn't seem to have been very popular with the population. ;) As in, "why does hard-working me earn about the same as the lazy alcoholic who never does any work?"
--- On Sat, 2/28/09, SA <s11131978 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> So why didn't the SU eliminate pay differentials? My
> understanding (Chris?) is that it, along with every other
> centrally planned economy, struggled at various moments with
> the issue.