period of not more than 3 years, (iii) o the end of a particular job.
In addition people may ‘contract to work on a daily or weekly
part-time basis’. Similar special provision for irregular or seasonal
work is made in most other socialist country labour codes. Hence
it is clear that the labour codes of socialist nations generally make
provision for the existence of seasonal or at any rate non-
permanent employment contracts. In most such instances the em-
ployee bears at least some of the ‘cost’ of this unavoidable
irregularity.

Generally, construction work does not however fall into this
category of irregular work. Various reports of the International
Labour Organisation dealing with the problems of stabilising em-
ployment in the industry suggest that construction is not now
treated as irregular in the socialist economies. Hence it is said that
in centrally planned economies where the instruments of produc-
tion are owned and controlled by public authority, the possibilities
of stabilising employment in the construction industry through
controls over investment programmes are almost unlimited, and it
appears that advantage has been taken of these opportunities. ‘In
Czechoslovakia employment in the building industry is not
seasonal in view of the planned economy, and the permanent em-
ployment of construction workers and their stability of earnings is
therefore assured’. ‘Indeed,’ permanent flow-line groups have
(even) overcome the problem of transferring teams of well-
organised and skilled workers over considerable distance.’

In the German Democratic Republic the same thing is true,
with the acute labour shortage in any case making any other
arrangement quite impossible. State construction enterprises are
regionally based and move anywhere within the region to carry
out construction work, though small local projects are carried out
by co-operative and self-help arrangements involving farm com-
munes or other production organisations. Similar conditions
prevailed elsewhere in the socialist countries.

The causes of irregular employment

The reasons why labour stabilisation has been possible in the
centrally-planned economies become clear if one examines the
problems which make irregularity of employment in this industry
‘inevitable’ in the capitalist countries. The I.L.O.’s Building, Civil
Engineering and Public Works Committee rightly identifies the

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