APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110024-7
system, after a miner who fulfilled his norm by 380%. Activists, specially trained and permitted to work under favorable conditions, establish a norm which is subsequently made binding on all workers. Individuals or teams of workers are encouraged to increase their norms voluntarily. "Socialist labor brigades" and "socialist competition" are also employed to inculcate an approved attitude toward work and labor discipline, and to develop a group spirit that will spur the individual to greater effort.
A continued rise in the level of labor productivity is essential in view of the regime's decision, implemented in 1966-67, to further reduce normal hours of work. The 5-day workweek was extended to all industrial workers in late 1967, and weekly working hours of 43¾ hours for work in one- and two-shift enterprises, and 42 hours for continuous work, were introduced. Labor authorities are expected to continue to manipulate job assignments, to be less attentive to safety standards, and to use greater numbers of women and children to reduce wages and increase the labor force. Although regulations are explicit on the subject of hours of work and compensation of overtime, there is much unpaid labor in the form of extra "voluntary" shifts, foregoing of rest periods, machinery maintenance outside working hours, and the Seifert methods, under which time lost during work is not counted as working time. Because of the need for labor, protective legislation for women, though seemingly adequate, is generally vague and is commonly bypassed. Regulations prohibiting the employment of women in labor injurious to health often are ignored. Such conditions are reflected in a high incidence of sickness among women and in an unusually high number of miscarriages. A high sickness rate among workers, stemming from actual physical illness and from malingering, results in a rate of absenteeism comparable to that caused in other countries by strikes and production shutdowns.
Although the regime has institutes an elaborate system of inspection, plant managers, who are officially responsible for maintaining safety standards, frequently fail to observe precautions that might jeopardize plan fulfillment. The same pressures operate on the workers and tend to make them careless in the attempt to meet their norms. As a result, the incidence of industrial accidents is high, over 334,600 in 1970. Modern concepts of worker environment such as ventilation and lighting have, however, been given considerable emphasis in industrial installations built since 1945.
4. Income
Average monthly family income in the households of wage and salary earners stood at DME1031 (US$245.48)[1] in 1970, approximately 75%—in money terms—of the level in West Germany. Prior to 1961, industrial earrings rose almost as rapidly as in West Germany as a result of the East German regime's use of wage incentives to discourage the flight of qualified workers to the West. Although wage gains slackened with the imposition of new work norms in 1962 and 1964, the large number of working women contributing to family income cushioned the drop in that figure by a substantial amount. Over 80% of the wives of East German wage and salary earners were employed in 1970, and most of them worked full time.
In real terms, the comparison of average incomes of the families of wage and salary earners in East and West Germany is even more unfavorable to the East. The difference is substantially greater if all families are included, principally because East Germany has no class comparable to West German property owners. The purchasing power of the East German mark is substantially less than that of West Germany, and the cost to the East German consumer of better quality goods and services is exorbitant, relative to the West. The disparity in real income levels between East and West Germany is greater for the upper income group, which is most prone to buy luxury goods; real incomes of the best paid East German households of wage and salary earners were estimated in 1967 to be only half those of their West German counterparts. Among low-income groups, however, real income levels in each country were about the same.
Information on earnings in agriculture is scanty, and family income figures are not available. No data are published on the earnings of collective farm members, who make up the bulk of the agricultural population. Their earnings appear to be lower, on the average, then those of agricultural workers who receive wages or salaries, but individual earnings vary widely. The earnings of a collective farmer depend not only on the prosperity of the entire farm but on the system (of which there are several) the farm uses for remunerating its members. Depending on the type of collective, from 20% to 40% of the collective's income is divided among the members in proportion to the amount of land each contributed upon joining the collective; the remainder is distributed according to the amount of work performed. Agricultural workers employed on state farms averaged DME710 (US$169.05) monthly in 1970.
Average monthly earnings of full-time wage and salary earners in the state-controlled or "socialist" sector (excluding services) stood at DME762
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110024-7
- ↑ The East German currency is the Mark of the German Bank of Issue or East German mark - DME. The DME was valued at 4.2 to US$1.00 prior to February 1972, when the value was set at DME3.15 = US$1.00. Parity is now set at DME2.8 = US$1.00.
