APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110024-7
cooperative organizations formed by licensed craftsmen. As a result of official pressure against independent craftsmen, the share of industrial handicrafts in total employment fell from about 9% in 1950 to 5% in 1961. After the closing of the Berlin Wall, regime pressure slackened and the share of handicrafts remained steady at that figure in 1970. A decline will no doubt take place in response to renewed pressure against the private sector by the Honecker regime. Females accounted for 42% of the 1970 total of 3,460,400 persons in industry and industrial handicrafts. They were much more numerous, however, in industry than in industrial handicrafts (Figure 13).
Employment trends within industry clearly reflect the priorities of the regime, which has consistently encouraged transfer of workers from consumer-oriented production to heavy industry, particularly to the so-called leading branches—chemicals, machine building, electrical engineering, and electronics. In 1970, approximately 915,500 wage and salary earners (not including apprentices), some 12% fewer than in 1955, were employed in light industry (ranging from textiles and wearing apparel to printing and reproduction) and in food, beverages, and tobacco. The number of wage and salary earners in the basic materials sector—power and utilities, mining and quarrying, metallurgy, chemicals, and building materials—rose only 5% in the 1955-70 period to 729,200. The greatest gain was registered in the metalworking sector, which includes machine building, electrical engineering, and precision equipment. These branches employed 1,173,100 wage and salary earners in 1970, some 23% more than in 1955 and nearly 42% of the 1970 total for all branches of industry excluding industrial handicrafts (2,817,800).
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FIGURE 13. Composition of the labor force by sex and branch of economic activity
Socialization of the economy has greatly influenced the distribution of the labor force by class of worker. Measures taken by the regime to restrict private enterprise caused the proportion of the labor force classed as employers, self-employed, and unpaid family workers to drop from nearly 26% in 1950 to about 3% in 1970, and was pushed below 1% in 1972 with the elimination of the remaining private firms. The proportion of wage and salary earners, already substantial in 1950 at 74% of the labor force, has risen since then to 85% in 1970. Cooperative members, a category not in existence until 1952, comprised 12% of the labor force in 1970. Most cooperative members work on collective farms. They do not receive set wages or salaries but share in the income of the farm (or other producer cooperative) which, in theory, they jointly own and manage. In fact, however, the cooperatives are virtually run by the state.
Wage and salary earners predominate in every branch of economic activity except for agriculture and handicrafts; their share of the work force is 93% or more in most branches, and in industry it is over 99%. The regime's introduction of producer cooperatives in agriculture, handicrafts, and—to a more limited extent—in construction has effected drastic changes in the class-of-workers distribution of those branches.
The most sweeping changes have occurred in agriculture, where the number of self-employed and unpaid family workers plummeted during the sudden and forcible completion of the collectivization drive in the spring of 1960. There was a corresponding rise in cooperative membership, as shown in the following tabulation (in percent of agricultural labor force):
| 1952 | 1960 | 1970 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wage and salary earners | 23.9 | 27.0 | 23.3 |
| Cooperative members | 2.4 | 70.3 | 75.8 |
| Self-employed and unpaid family workers | 73.7 | 2.9 | 0.9 |
| Total | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
In handicrafts, wage and salary earners and self-employed workers have declined sharply as the number of regime-favored cooperatives has increased. The private sector continues to play a significant, if declining, role in handicraft production, and in 1970 some 30% of all craft workers were employers, self-employed, or unpaid family workers. Nearly 38% of
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110024-7
