Engineering and Construction Company (MECCO) when it had
been a fully state-owned operation for less than a year. This paper
was originally written at the time of the dispute and involves a
discussion of what would have been an appropriate and con-
structive Government or management response to these demands.
This was a period when the Party’s ‘Mwongozo’ was in the air,
and there was much vague and unspecific talk about the
progressive role to be played by the people in general and by tne
workers in particular. What follows was an attempt to apply these
general arguments to a particular situation.

The demand for an end to the irregularity of employment in the
construction industry raises some important questions. It is widely
accepted that intermittent, frictional and technological unem-
ployment are more or less an inevitable accompaniment of the
construction industry in a dynamic economy. In reaction to the
workers’ demands it was first necessary to establish just how
‘inevitable’ this condition is, and especially, whether or not it is
also unavoidable in a socialist setting. Is the construction industry
a ‘special case’ which cannot, either now or ever, be organised to
provide employment of the same regularity and security as other
types of enterprises? And if it is such a special case, then who
should bear the costs of these difficulties? It is clear that these
costs could be assumed by the society as a whole; could be shared
by the society and the construction workers; or could be borne en-
tirely by the workers. It can be suggested at the outset that some
sort of sharing arrangement which imposes at least some of the
costs on workers and managers, so as to provide them with an in-
centive to minimise the difficulties, is most likely to be the best
solution.

As for practices elsewhere, it appears that the irregularity of
employment in the industry is accepted in capitalist economies,
but that most of these have been induced to make efforts to
minimise this evil. In the planned economies the problem has been
tackled in a more comprehensive way and regularity has been all
but established.

An examination of the labour legislation in socialist countries
did reveal that virtually every labour code makes some special
provision for temporary or seasonal industries. Hence the Labour
Code (1970) of the U.S.S.R. stipulates that contracts of em-
ployment may be made for (i) an indefinite period, (ii) a definite

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