Area Handbook for Albania Part 18

LABOR

Although economic development is still in its infancy, growing concern has been officially expressed about the adequacy of the labor force to meet the needs of industrialization and of expanding social services without adversely affecting agricultural production. The main cause of the incipient labor shortage is low productivity owing to a lack of industrial experience, a low level of mechanization, and the survival of backward traditional methods in agriculture. Officially, low productivity has been ascribed to poor labor discipline and inefficient management arising from an inadequately developed sense of political and social responsibility. It has also been blamed on a failure of manpower planning and on the relaxation of central controls over enterprise funds.

At the end of 1969 the Central Committee of the Party adopted a decision on means for correcting this situation. An important element of the program is the education and political indoctrination of the workers.

This task is a major function of the trade unions, which are primarily a political arm of the Party for the control of labor, without any significant responsibilities in the field of labor relations (see ch. 6, Government Structure and Political System).

In 1967, the last year for which official employment data are available, the working-age population comprised 932,000 persons, 739,200 of whom were actually employed. The number of employed did not include roughly 6,000 peasants working on the private holdings still remaining in that year. Including these peasants, the partic.i.p.ation rate in the labor force was 80 percent.

Two-thirds of the labor force was employed in agriculture, the remainder in a variety of nonagricultural pursuits, chief among which were industry, construction, trade, and education. Apart from the peasants working their own land, farm labor included about 427,000 persons on collective farms and 64,000 on state farms. The industrial labor force of 105,300 accounted for 14.1 percent of total employment, and 40,000 construction workers, for 5.4 percent. The nearly 32,000 workers in trade and 25,000 workers in education const.i.tuted, respectively, 4.2 and 3.4 percent of the employed manpower.

The officially reported labor force, which comprises nonagricultural labor and state farm workers only, increased by 53 percent between 1960 and 1967, from 203,800 to 312,400 persons. The increase represents an annual growth rate of 6.3 percent. At this rate, the labor force in 1970 would be about 375,000 persons. It has been informally reported as 400,000. Collective farm employment rose, in round numbers, from 282,000 in 1960 to 336,000 in 1966 and to 427,000 in 1967. The unusually large increase in 1967 resulted from an intensive drive to collectivize the remaining privately owned farms and also from a government policy of reversing the population flow from the farms to the cities. With the major reservoir of individual farms exhausted, the number of collective farm workers could increase up to 1970 by roughly 45,000 to 50,000 through natural population growth. Absence of data on rural-urban population s.h.i.+fts precludes any firm estimate of the size of the collective farm labor force in 1970.

According to preliminary estimates by the planning authorities, an increase of between 120,000 and 130,000 workers outside the collective farm sector would be needed to implement the industrial and social programs of the five-year plan for the 1971-75 period if productivity remained at the level of the 1965-69 period. The natural growth of the able-bodied urban population during this period was estimated not to exceed 29,000 persons. An outflow of up to 100,000 persons from the rural areas would therefore be necessary to meet the estimated manpower needs. Such a contingency could not be countenanced because of the severe damage it would inflict on the rural economy. Attainment of a higher rate of partic.i.p.ation in the labor force and of a substantial increase in labor productivity has therefore been considered by the Party leaders.h.i.+p of utmost urgency to ensure sustained economic development.

The latest evidence of the leaders.h.i.+p's profound concern about these basic labor problems was provided by the Party's Central Committee plenum held at the end of December 1969, devoted to a discussion of means for raising productivity and tightening labor discipline. In its report delivered to the plenum, the Political Bureau (Politburo) of the Central Committee expressed strong dissatisfaction with what it considered an unsatisfactory rate of partic.i.p.ation in employment by the collective farm population. It placed the blame for this situation on local government organs, which had become reconciled to the backward traditional concepts that keep homemakers and some young girls in the home and that require a member of the family to look after the family's privately owned livestock and thus be unable to seek outside work.

The Party's report also called attention to the prevalence of a petty bourgeois att.i.tude among many families of workers, employees, and servicemen that keeps their members from accepting employment. To facilitate the employment of women, the Party urged more widespread provision of amenities, such as nurseries and dining halls, that would free them from household duties.

Meaningful information on labor productivity is not available because statistics on this subject have not been published and because essential details of the methods used in calculating the percentage rates of increase in productivity that appear from time to time in official public statements are not sufficiently known. Based on physical output and labor data, Western observers believe that the published data overstate the actual advance achieved.

According to the Politburo report, productivity in industry rose 2.2 times between 1950 and 1968, and this growth accounted for 60 percent of the increase in industrial production during that period. In agriculture 67 percent of the increase in output during those years was attributed to the growth of productivity. These figures indicate a slightly faster advance in agricultural productivity, but in absolute terms productivity in agriculture has been very much lower than in industry.

During the Third Five-Year Plan (1961-65) labor productivity reportedly rose by an annual average of 2.1 percent in industry, 4.6 percent in construction, and 2.7 percent in automotive transport. Data for the years after 1965 had not been published by mid-1970 except for official statements that the planned levels had not been reached.

The lag of productivity has been attributed by the Central Committee to a p.r.o.nounced shortage of skilled manpower and to various manifestations of poor labor discipline and faulty management. Chief among the cited shortcomings in the field of labor are excessive absenteeism, resulting in part from inadequate medical and public dining facilities; loafing on the job; and a generally negligent att.i.tude toward work that entails a loss of time and a low quality of the product. On the management side, the main shortcomings include poor organization of production, acceptance of unjustifiably low work output norms, and labor h.o.a.rding.

Both workers and managers have been accused of a reluctance to adopt progressive production techniques and of frequently putting their own personal interest or that of their enterprise ahead of the public good.

A disorganization of the material supply arising from frequent noncompletion of production a.s.signments and poor coordination among plants and industry branches has also been cited as an important factor responsible for substantial losses of worktime and, consequently, of reduced productivity.

Enterprise managers have been repeatedly accused of irresponsibility in the use of resources, which has entailed a wasteful use of machinery and labor. Inadequate planning of production schedules and poor maintenance are said to cause an inordinate loss of machine time. Managers have also been charged with abusing the legal provision that allows them to employ up to 2 percent more workers (presumably to meet emergencies or to increase output) than are called for by the enterprise plan. Such abuse has been facilitated by the elimination sometime in the middle or late 1960s of the control by banks over enterprise funds allotted for the payment of wages.

A change in the method of productivity planning, which involved a redefinition of productivity as a calculated index, is reported to have been widely misinterpreted as downgrading the importance of productivity. This misconception has been reinforced by the circ.u.mstance that productivity levels are planned for only about 70 percent of the nonagricultural workers.

In many enterprises labor norms--that is, the minimum amount of work a worker in any given job is required to perform per unit of time--are officially said to be inordinately low. There are reported to be many enterprises in which the established norms are substantially overfulfilled despite the fact that the effective workday does not exceed 6 to 7 hours. These norms, it is said, require only about 5- to 6 hours of work per day and are thus responsible for a 25- to 35-percent loss of output or, conversely, of labor wastage. Yet, despite the low norms, about 14 percent of the workers fail to complete their a.s.signed tasks. Although a Politburo decision in April 1967 called the attention of Party, government, and economic organs to the importance of correct labor norms, this matter has been generally neglected and little has been accomplished. Many of the existing norms have become obsolete.

The Politburo's program that was adopted toward the end of 1969 for raising productivity is based essentially on an appeal to the social consciousness of all partic.i.p.ants in the economic process and calls for improved performance in all aspects and at all levels of production through greater self-discipline and more stringent controls. A practical difficulty faced by the leaders.h.i.+p in the execution of its program is the lack of a precise concept of productivity and of an effective methodology for establis.h.i.+ng sound productivity targets or for measuring actual performance. The problem is particularly p.r.o.nounced in agriculture. Experimentation with new concepts and methods has been underway for some time under the joint guidance of the State Planning Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Mining, and the Ministry of Construction. Results of the experimentation are to serve as a basis for further decisions by the Council of Ministers in 1970.

A distinctive feature of the country's labor scene is the practice of mobilizing large numbers of the population for so-called voluntary work on various types of construction and agricultural projects, including the building of railroads, housing, and irrigation ca.n.a.ls; land improvement; harvesting; and the planting of trees. Thousands and, at times, tens of thousands of individuals from all walks of life, including members of the armed forces, are a.s.sembled by the government to carry out specific jobs with simple tools or with their bare hands.

Party dogma holds that these projects, which use vast numbers of people, reflect the Party's strength, the might of the ma.s.ses, and the great reserves to be found in their midst. The projects are considered to be not only of great economic and social importance but also of great ideological, political, and educational significance because, among other things, they reflect the determination and readiness of the broad working ma.s.ses to implement the Party's line. Official complaints about flagging enthusiasm for housing construction in 1968 suggest a less favorable public acceptance of this practice than that proclaimed by the Party dogma.

AGRICULTURE

Agriculture is organized on the Stalinist Soviet model: all activity is centrally planned, and farm operations are carried out by state and collective farms. Government policy has accorded a high priority to the expansion and modernization of agricultural production as a means of attaining self-sufficiency in foods. In an effort to obviate the historical dependence on grain imports, the government has placed special emphasis on increasing the output of bread grains, which furnish the bulk of the people's diet, and on a rapid rise in the production of potatoes as a subst.i.tute for bread.

Great importance is attached to the expansion of industrial crops, such as cotton, tobacco, sugar beets, and sunflowers, in order to provide raw materials for the growing domestic industries, in addition to maintaining traditional exports. Expansion of grape vineyards, olive groves, and other fruit and vegetable growing has also been promoted to develop larger exportable surpluses. According to official data, farm output increased half again as fast as the population between 1950 and 1967, but it is still inadequate to supply the country's minimum needs for bread and livestock products.

The government's ambitious farm modernization program has been imposed on tradition-bound peasants averse to rapid change. A large part of the land improvement and irrigation work has been accomplished through ma.s.s mobilization of peasants and of the urban population for so-called voluntary work on the model of the Chinese coolie system. Socialization of the land has had a deleterious effect on work incentives, with a consequent lag in the planned growth of agricultural production.

Measures adopted by the government to ensure better work performance on the collective farms did not prove sufficiently effective, and a scaling down of the five-year plan target for agricultural production could therefore not be avoided.

To provide the additional acreage needed for crop expansion, large-scale programs of land reclamation and melioration have been executed. At the same time, heavy stress has been laid on the improvement of farm techniques and on mechanization as means for increasing yields and production. A planned expansion of livestock herds and of the output of livestock products has been hampered by inadequate incentives for peasants and by a shortage of fodder. The agricultural potential is limited by the predominance of rugged mountain terrain and by frequent spring droughts that cause extensive damage to crops. To minimize the adverse effects of the droughts, an extensive irrigation system is being developed.

In 1967 the area of land in agricultural use, excluding forests, roads, and homesites, amounted to about 3.0 million acres, or 43 percent of the country's total area. More than half of the agricultural land was in unimproved natural pastures, with an additional small acreage in natural meadows. Cultivated land bearing field and tree crops totaled about 1.4 million acres, of which about 1.1 million acres were arable land, equivalent to about two-thirds of an acre per capita. Almost half of the cultivated land was located in hilly and mountainous zones, which are less productive than the coastal plains. The agricultural acreage was expanded by 3 percent between 1950 and 1967, but a significant further expansion is precluded by the country's rugged terrain.

A high priority has been placed by the leaders.h.i.+p on expanding the cultivated area and raising its productivity through land reclamation, soil improvement, and irrigation. Most of this work has been accomplished manually, through mobilization of large numbers of people for ma.s.sive projects and with the partic.i.p.ation by members of the armed forces. Between 1950 and 1969 the area of cultivated land rose by almost one-half to a total of more than 1.4 million acres, at least 185,000 acres of which have been reclaimed since 1965. The bulk of the increase in cultivated land was achieved at the expense of natural pastures and meadows, the area of which has declined by about 265,000 and 50,000 acres, respectively, since 1950. About 70 percent of the increase in cultivated land was added to arable acreage.

By the end of 1969, however, the reclamation work had fallen behind the five-year plan schedule. In early 1970 the government therefore took special measures to ensure that the entire 285,000-acre reclamation program would be completed as planned, bringing the total cultivated acreage to about 1.5 million acres. Very substantial progress in this endeavor was reported to have been achieved by the end of March, largely through the mobilization for this task of about 200,000 persons from urban and rural areas.

Expansion of the irrigation network has proceeded somewhat more slowly than planned, with the use of the same ma.s.s construction methods. As reported by the State Planning Commission to the People's a.s.sembly in mid-February of 1970, about 140,000 acres had been brought under irrigation during the 1966-69 period, and approximately 55,000 more acres were to be added in 1970. These figures imply a total irrigated area of about 645,000 acres in 1969 and about 700,000 acres planned for 1970--an increase of 2,470 acres over the original five-year plan target. Attainment of this goal would require a construction volume in 1970 equal to the total achieved during the first two years of the five-year period and almost half again as large as the volume in 1968.

About half the arable acreage was irrigable in 1969.

The agricultural organization consists of two types of farms: state farms, operated under the direction of either the central or the local government, and collective farms. State farms, modeled after the _sovkhozes_ of the Soviet Union, were established beginning in 1945 on lands confiscated from large landowners and foreign concessionaires and contain some of the most productive land in the country. Managers and workers of state farms are salaried government employees, who may receive special bonuses for superior production achievements.

Collective farms were organized through the forcible consolidation of private holdings. Begun in 1946 against strong peasant resistance, collectivization did not a.s.sume major proportions until 1955 and was virtually completed only in 1968 with the consolidation of remote mountain villages. The basic features of the collective farm are: complete government control; collective use of the land and other princ.i.p.al means of production; obligatory common work by the members, based on established minimum work norms and enforced through economic and other sanctions; and distribution of the net income to members on the basis of the quant.i.ty and quality of work performed.

With regard to income distribution, collective farm members are residual claimants ent.i.tled to share whatever remains after completion of compulsory deliveries to the state; provision of prescribed investment and operating funds for the farm; payment for irrigation water, machine-tractor station services, and other outstanding obligations; and setting aside 2 percent of the income for social a.s.sistance to members.

Information on farm income levels is not available. Nominally, the General a.s.sembly of all the members is the highest ruling organ of the collective farm, but actual control rests with the farm's basic Party organization (see ch. 6, Government Structure and Political System).

An important feature of the state and collective farms is the small private plot allotted to a member family for its own personal use. Since 1967, when these allotments were reduced in size, the maximum legal size of the private plots, including the land under all farm buildings other than the family dwelling, has ranged from 1,000 to 1,500 square meters (about 10,750 to 16,150 square feet, or one-quarter to three-eighths of an acre), depending upon the location and availability of irrigation.

The collective farm statute also ent.i.tles each family to maintain a few domestic animals privately. Only one cow or one pig is authorized, but up to ten or twenty sheep and goats may be allowed. In typical cases a family may have a cow or pig and a few sheep or goats. More liberal allowances for poor mountain farms may include both a cow and pig as well as the maximum number of sheep and goats.

In 1964 there were thirty-eight large, centrally controlled state farms with an average of about 7,700 acres of farmland, including about 4,800 acres of cultivated land. In 1968 the average size of the state farms, the number of which had remained stable, was reported to be about 7,350 acres, a reduction of almost 600 acres since 1964. This decline in acreage was brought about by a transfer of some state farmlands to small collective farms as a means of increasing their viability. In 1964, 250 locally administered state farms were reported to average about 380 acres and have probably continued unchanged. In 1970 state farms cultivated 20 percent of the total acreage under cultivation, and collective farms worked 80 percent.

The number and average size of collective farms have varied widely as a result of the continuing creation of new farms and the consolidation of existing units. In the fall of 1969 there were 805 collective farms, compared with 1,208 in 1967. The consolidated farms included 568 units consisting of two to three villages each, eighty farms of six to ten villages, and another five farms of eleven villages each. Eighty-seven percent of all collective farms had less than 2,470 acres of cultivated land each, and only nine percent had more than about 6,200 acres.

Highland farms were among the smallest, many being smaller than 750 acres. In 1968 the average size of all collective farms was reported to be about 1,400 acres of cultivated land. In 1967, before collectivization was completed, the population on collective farms consisted of 184,400 families--an average of about 150 families per farm--which provided about 427,000 farmworkers. As a result of further consolidation, the number of families per farm increased significantly.

Although available statistics are inadequate for a comprehensive review of the crop and livestock situation, five-year plan data and fragmentary information contained in annual official reports on economic plan fulfillment provide a reasonable approximation of the production volume of major crops but only a rough approximation of the size of the livestock herds (see tables 10 and 11).

Published data on total agricultural production claim a virtual doubling of output between 1960 and 1969. During this period the share of field crops in total output is reported to have increased at the expense of livestock production--a direct result of the government's emphasis on bread grains. The share of field crops is reported to have risen from 44 percent in 1960 to 59 percent in 1967, whereas the share of livestock output declined from 43 to 29.5 percent. Fruit production contributed about 10 percent of total output during the period, and collection of wild medicinal plants, another 1 to 4 percent.

Bread-grain production, including wheat, rye, and corn, increased by 80 percent in the 1966-69 period, but attainment of the five-year plan target requires a reversal of the downward trend in annual output increases since 1966 and a tonnage increase in 1970 from 20 to 38 percent greater than those obtained in the 1967-69 period. The output of potatoes in 1969 was eleven times larger than production in 1965 yet was only half the volume planned for 1970. The required doubling of the output to meet the five-year plan target is roughly equivalent to the increase in production achieved during the preceding three-year period.

Nevertheless, the substantial rise in the output of bread grains and potatoes achieved during the first four years of the five-year plan significantly, although not entirely, reduced the need for grain imports, which amounted to about 110,000 tons of wheat and 20,000 tons of corn in 1963 and 1964.

Production of rice, cotton, and tobacco was reported to have lagged through 1969, and the output of cotton actually declined in 1967 and 1968. This and other reported information about these crops indicate that the possibility of attaining the 1970 target is precluded for rice and is questionable for cotton. In the case of tobacco, however, reported production in 1969 was already about 1,000 tons above the five-year plan goal, in spite of the reported lag. As early as 1967 the output of sugar beets approached the volume planned for 1970, but subsequent developments regarding this crop have been cloaked in official silence. According to officially reported data, the production of vegetables in 1969 surpa.s.sed the 1970 target by some 60,000 tons, or nearly 27 percent, yet no mention of this fact was contained in the report on plan fulfillment for that year.

_Table 10. Production of Field Crops and Fruits in Albania, 1960 and 1965-70 (in thousands of metric tons)_

-------------------------------------------------------------------------- Plan 1960 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Grains 216.7 324.6 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. 659.0[*]

Breadgrains[**] (197.1) (296.6) (389.3) (445.0) (494.0) (533.4) (593.0)[+]

Potatoes 23.4 21.2 108.0 115.9 166.0 238.8 475.0 Rice 4.6 10.2 10.5 11.3 n.a. n.a. 24.0 Cotton 16.1 24.6 24.7 21.9 18.5 25.0 34.0 Tobacco 8.1 13.3 13.7 13.1 14.9 17.1 16.0 Sugar beets 72.7 90.2 132.9 138.5 n.a. n.a. 140.0 Vegetables 71.3 140.9 156.5 172.2 180.8 283.8 224.0 Fruits, deciduous 25.3 39.7 47.8 40.7 58.6 n.a. 69.5 Fruits, citrus 1.7 2.0 2.2 2.6 n.a. n.a. 5.6 Grapes 22.3 42.9 54.1 48.5 61.1 n.a. 94.4 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- n.a.--not available * Except for the data on fruits, all figures in this column are rounded to the nearest thousand tons.

** Wheat, rye, and corn.

+ The Fourth Five-Year Plan (1966-70) calls for more than this amount.

In the absence of information on the planting of fruit trees and vines, the fruit production trends of recent years provide the only indication of the extent to which the fruit production program of the five-year plan may be realized. Available data through 1968 for deciduous fruits and grapes and through 1967 for citrus fruits indicate that the 1970 goals for grapes and citrus fruits may not be reached. Production of citrus fruits would have to more than double in three years, whereas an increase of only 53 percent was achieved in the 1961-67 period.

Similarly, grape output would have to rise by 54 percent in two years, compared with an increase of 42 percent in the preceding three years.

The outlook for deciduous fruits is more favorable. The needed output increase of 20 percent over two years is well within previously attained limits.