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Yugoslavia The Workers
The Yugoslav industrial working class grew exponentially
after World War II, when the communist regime launched its drive
for rapid industrialization. From 1947 to 1952, industrial
employment grew by 75.2 percent as peasants left their farms for
jobs in the cities. From 1954 to 1975, industrial jobs grew at an
average annual rate of 4.3 percent, and the industrial working
class grew from 1.1 million in 1947 to 6.3 million in 1985. In
the mid-1980s, the social (state controlled) sector of the
economy employed about 98 percent of the country's workers.
Several years after Yugoslavia's 1948 economic break with the
Soviet Union, the government instituted a comprehensive economic
reform that transformed state ownership of enterprises into
"social ownership" and theoretically turned over control of the
enterprises to the workers who labored in them
(see Socialist Self-Management
, ch. 3). Workers' self-management remained a
sacrosanct tenet of the Yugoslav political culture for the next
thirty-five years, until economic turmoil forced structural
reform in 1989.
Under self-management, workers who were permanent employees
in enterprises were virtually guaranteed a job for life. If a
worker terminated employment with an enterprise, however, he or
she almost always lost the possibility of finding another
position within the social sector. Under the Associated Labor Act
of 1976, each worker belonged to a basic organization of
associated labor (BOAL) assigned according to his or her precise
role in the production process. The BOALs elected workers'
councils, which in turn appointed executive bodies to set wages
and production goals and recommend investment policy. The
executive body appointed a director or board responsible for dayto -day operation of the enterprise.
Despite the profoundly egalitarian ideology on which it was
based, practical operation of self-management reflected the
stratification of the industrial work force. Skilled and educated
workers occupied a disproportionately large number of seats on
workers' councils. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, skilled
workers (roughly a third of enterprise employees) regularly won
half the workers' council slots; the percentage of semiskilled or
unskilled workers declined during the same period. Workers'
council presidents also came disproportionately from the ranks of
skilled workers or white-collar employees. Workers with advanced
educational degrees accounted for nearly two-thirds of all
workers' council presidents. The composition of executive bodies
reflected the same trend.
The enterprise director and the director's staff wielded
considerable influence. Access to and control of information
about business conditions and overall operation of the enterprise
gave the director an advantage in steering workers' council
decision making. Workers exercised more influence on policies
directly affecting working conditions and wages; over the years,
they left investment and production decisions and daily operation
of the enterprise to the director.
Self-managed enterprises responded to market conditions
differently than firms in capitalist countries, and the
relationship of the interests of management and skilled and
unskilled workers also differed. Policies geared toward enhancing
the enterprise's efficiency and competitiveness conflicted with
socially guaranteed higher wages and job security for workers.
Economic downturns generally caused reductions in investment
rather than layoffs or reduced wages. An enterprise could reduce
its labor force only with the workers' consent. This normally
meant long, tedious legal procedures and finding alternative
employment or job training to prevent workers from becoming
unemployed.
The economic restructuring that followed the turmoil of the
1980s radically changed the fortunes of the working class.
Strikes reached epidemic proportions by the end of the decade.
Large numbers of workers returned their membership cards in the
League of Communists of Yugoslavia
(
LCY--see Glossary), and by
1985 party membership included only one of eleven semiskilled
workers and one of five skilled workers
(see League of Communists of Yugoslavia
, ch. 4).
Lacking organizational autonomy, the official trade unions
failed to protect the workers' living standards, and workers
generally regarded the unions as irrelevant
(see Trade Unions
, ch. 4). In the late 1980s, unofficial
unions began forming in
Slovenia and the other republics after the government lifted
restrictions on forming independent organizations.
Laws restricting private business ownership became
increasingly ineffectual in the late 1980s. Most often ignored
were tax statutes and restrictions on the number of workers
employed in private enterprise. Workers outside the social sector
frequently worked sixty or more hours per week and earned much
better wages than those paid for the same work in the social
sector. Private employers often employed skilled workers
illegally, especially after the normal closing hour of socially
owned enterprises (3:00 P.M.), and many workers employed in the
social sector moonlighted in their free time.
In the 1980s, unemployment became a serious threat to the
Yugoslav working class. Between 1965 and 1985, the number of
officially unemployed persons rose from 237,000 to 1,039,000.
Unemployment rates varied widely among regions. Slovenia
consistently had the lowest, Kosovo by far the highest
unemployment. The comprehensive economic reform of December 1989
led to elimination of redundant workers in Yugoslav firms and
brought another steep increase in national unemployment
(see Unemployment and Living Standards
, ch. 3). In the initial
aftermath of the reform, government planners relied on expansion
in the private sector to re-employ workers who lost their jobs.
In the first year, however, unemployment continued to rise.
Data as of December 1990
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