To accomplish the task, each mechanization section is to coordinate the use of its own equipment with that belonging to the collective. Within the framework of this cooperation, the state mechanization enterprises were made increasingly responsible for the agricultural production process. The planning of mechanized farm operations, the allocation of equipment for specific purposes, and the timing and supervision of all operations are joint responsibilities of the section chief and the farm's chief engineer. Close cooperation and a smooth working relationship between them is therefore needed for effective performance.

Mechanized work on farms is carried on by permanent teams composed of agricultural mechanics and collective farm members. They take over assigned areas in all sectors of the farm and are in charge of all relevant operations until the crops have been stored. In slack period the mechanization sections work outside the cooperative farms in order to utilize more fully their manpower and equipment.

The reorganization of the agricultural mechanization enterprises was accompanied by a change in the system of pay for mechanics and maintenance men to provide for greater incentives. For work done on the farms, these workers receive 80 percent of their annual salary, and the remainder is paid at the end of the year, in whole or in part, depending upon the degree to which the production plans of the farm on which they work are fulfilled. Provision was also made for bonus payments in the event of over-fulfillment of production plans. The shift in wage policy was accompanied by a raise in the rates of pay for mechanics, maintenance men, and personnel operating the equipment in the field on a piecework basis. This measure increases the burden on the already strained budgets of many collective farms.

FARM LABOR

The agricultural labor force presents a paradox of substantial underemployment associated with widespread labor shortages, particularly of more productive, skilled personnel; the shortages are especially prevalent during the planting and harvesting seasons. This phenomenon is an outgrowth primarily of a progressive qualitative deterioration of the agricultural manpower pool, owing to a continuing transfer of predominantly young male workers into nonagricultural occupations. Maldistribution of the labor force and poor management of the available manpower resources have been important contributing factors. The outmigration from agriculture has been spurred by a wide disparity in urban and rural incomes and by the relatively inferior living conditions on the farms. At the beginning of the 1970s the average income of farmworkers was only half as high as that of industrial workers.

Only fragmentary information relating to the farm labor force has been published in official statistics. Agricultural employment in 1969 constituted 51 percent of total employment, compared with 65.4 percent in 1960 and 74.1 percent in 1950. Published absolute figures bear only on employment by the state; in 1969 the state employed 431,200 persons, including 290,000 on state farms and 93,500 in agricultural mechanization enterprises. Data published in connection with a conference held by the Romanian Academy of Social and Political Sciences, however, implied that total agricultural employment in 1968 amounted to 5.2 million persons, including 4.3 million able-bodied collective farm members. The proportion of women in the collective farm labor force was reported to be 57.5 percent in 1966; the proportion was much larger in highly developed industrial zones. More than 70 percent of the collective farm workers, but only about 10 to 15 percent of the workers on state farms, were engaged in crop production.

Not all the collective farm members participate in the work of the collective. Some are permanently employed in nonagricultural branches of the economy. Others—as many as 25 percent of all farmers in 1969—work as day laborers in industry and construction, on state farms, and in other occupations. Housewives with small children and wives of salaried farm employees also take no part in the collective work. Members who do participate generally work only a portion of the year because there is not sufficient work for them to be fully occupied. In the years 1967 to 1969, these members, on the average, contributed only from 139 to 142 man-days per year. In 1968, for example, 22 percent of all collective farmers put in not more than forty man-days, and 55 percent of the farmers worked fewer than 120 days. Many farmers work only the minimum number of days required to keep their personal plots. There are wide variations in the degree of labor participation between geographic regions, between individual farms, and among production sectors of a single farm. At the beginning of the decade of the 1970s about 40 percent of the income of collective farm families was derived from nonagricultural pursuits.

Underemployment in agriculture is expected to continue at least throughout the 1970s. Industry, though growing very rapidly, will not be able to absorb any significant numbers of farmworkers because of the government's emphasis on mechanization and automation of production. In the 1971-75 period industrial manpower requirements will be met almost entirely through natural population increase. Relieving agricultural underemployment through an expansion of the services sector is not being given serious consideration on the grounds that "no further expansion of this sector can be undertaken at the expense of achieving a high level of productivity in the branches of material production and hence in agriculture, too."

Raising the low productivity level of collective farm labor through greater capital inputs, and thereby increasing the incomes of members, presents a difficult problem not only because of a shortage of investment funds but also because the magnitude of the collective farm labor cannot be adjusted to the needs of production, as in the case of state farms; it is determined by the number of families living on the farm. The collective farm cannot limit the number of members who may participate in the work. Each member has the right and, at the same time, the duty to participate in the work performed for the collective, and the collective has the duty to provide equal opportunities for all its members to work and to earn adequate incomes; yet modernization of production necessarily brings with it an ever smaller need for manpower.

A solution of the farm manpower problem was not in sight by late 1971. There was general agreement among Romanian economists concerned with the matter about a need to improve the utilization of the available labor resources, to increase farm incomes and, above all, to stop the migration of young people from villages to towns. No concrete program for attaining these ends, however, emerged from a national conference on farm labor held in mid-1970. Proposals advanced by a number of economists to expand industrial activities in the villages, particularly cottage industries and the processing of farm products, were questioned by others who feared that these activities would tend to drain some of the remaining productive elements from the collective farm labor force.