La valeur du travail et sa rétribution en Hongrie

Abstract

The Value of Labour and its Remuneration in Hungary. Through an ethnographie study involving participant observation in a big rubber factory in Hungary, the author studies the operation of the System of cooperative sub-contracting within factories which has been in operation since 1982. This new production mechanism, designed to offset the rigidities of state-owned firms by offering freely associated workers the use of the machinery outside their normal work under specially negotiated contracts, over-turns the relations of production prevailing in the bureaucratized economy. These new "labour collectives" provide signifkant improvement in outputs for the factory and new income for the participants (drawn from the elite of the workforce). They make efficient use of the technical competence and professional commitment of each of those concerned, while giving rise to a new type of inequality among the staff. They also give rise to new kinds of problems and conflicts about the management of a firm that lacks hierarchical organization, as well as to evaluation of the contributions by the different co-operators, each endowed with different capacities, training and degrees of commitment.