Investment allotments to consumer goods industries ranged between 12.2 and 18.8 percent of industrial investment, except for an unusually high allocation of 21.5 percent in 1970. In 1971, however, the investment share of consumer industries dropped sharply to only 14.5 percent. The predominance of investment in heavy industry reflected the leadership's basic economic policy tenet that, with minor temporary exceptions, the production of capital goods must develop more rapidly than the output of consumer goods.
Construction of industrial plants has frequently fallen behind schedule, causing losses of planned production and disruption of the five-year plans. The situation became critical in the fall of 1972 because of the failure to commission on time new facilities that were counted upon to produce in 1973, among other products, 0.5 million tons of rolled steel; 0.4 million tons of mineral fertilizers; 30,000 tons of synthetic fibers; 20,000 tons of cellulose; 11,000 tons of polyethylene; 0.3 million kilowatts of electric generating capacity; and a large volume of machinery and equipment.
The main reasons for the construction lag were delays in the supply of materials and a shortage of construction workers. In an effort to expedite the completion of the most essential projects that were under the direct supervision of the Council of Ministers because of their national importance, the council created a special operational bureau for the coordination and control of the construction activities associated with these projects. At the same time 6,000 workers were transferred to the priority projects from less important construction jobs. These measures did little to solve the basic problems and merely shifted the incidence of construction delays from one category of projects to another.
The labor force in state and collective industry numbered 1.17 million workers in 1971, of whom 542,000—or 46 percent—were women. The labor force had increased by 54 percent compared with its size in 1960, and the number of women workers more than doubled. About 88 percent of the workers were employed in manufacturing; the remaining 12 percent were engaged in mining and energy production. Production of capital goods provided employment for 52.5 percent of the workers, and consumer goods industries absorbed the remainder. One-fourth of the labor force was concentrated in machine building and metalworking, and another one-fourth was occupied in food processing and textile production (see Organization and Structure, this ch.).
By far the largest proportion of women workers—26 percent of their total number—were employed in the textiles and clothing branches of industry, where they constituted 77 percent of total employment. Women constituted the majority of workers in food processing—53 percent—and accounted for 21 percent of the workers in machine building and metalworking. Substantial numbers of women were also employed in chemical and rubber plants, in logging and woodworking, and in the production of leather shoes and furs. Four-fifths of all women working in industry were in blue-collar jobs.
According to official statistics, 95 percent of the workers in 1971 were directly engaged in production; the rest were employed in various auxiliary occupations, such as maintenance and warehousing. Yet in outlining means for raising industrial labor productivity in the fall of 1972, the minister of labor and social welfare included as an objective a reduction in the proportion of auxiliary personnel to about 30 or 35 percent of the number of production workers in industry. About 17 percent of the production workers were in white-collar jobs; information on the total number of white-collar workers has not been published.
The majority of industrial workers are paid on a piecework basis, but the importance of piecework has been declining and has varied widely among industrial branches. In 1971 almost 62 percent of the workers were paid on this basis—a significantly smaller proportion than the 80 percent of workers remunerated in this manner in 1957. The proportion of workers employed on the piecework basis in 1971 was highest in the manufacture of clothing—89.5 percent—and lowest in the production of coal and petroleum—25.2 percent. In construction, 84.6 percent of the workers were paid on the piecework basis.
The average annual wage of all industrial workers in 1971 was 1,526 leva, compared to an average of 962 leva in 1960. On the whole, wages of production workers were somewhat higher than wages of auxiliary personnel, and the pay of white-collar production workers was higher than that of blue-collar workers. The average wage of workers in capital goods industries was 21 percent higher than the wage of workers in consumer goods industries. The wage was highest in mining and lowest in manufacturing. Within the state industrial branches, average annual wages ranged from 2,009 leva in the production of coal and petroleum to 1,196 leva in the manufacture of clothing. Wages in collective industry were generally lower than in state industry; the difference between the average annual wages in these sectors was 12 percent.
Industrial productivity and growth have suffered from a shortage of trained workers and technical personnel. The supply of skilled workers in the fall of 1972 was reported to be only half the number needed to fill available positions. Responsibility for this situation has been placed, in part, on the lack of coordination between the industrial ministries and the Ministry of National Education concerning technical and vocational training programs. There has been a pronounced disproportion in the numbers of trainees in the various technical specialities, and technical training generally has not been up to the level demanded by modern technology. Enterprises themselves have been slow in undertaking to train their own workers. The scarcity of skilled personnel has been accentuated by the export of trained workers to the Soviet Union to help develop the exportation of mineral and timber resources in return for raw material imports.