Just below the Politburo and the Central Committee were the vast Party and government bureaucracy, professional people and intellectuals, and managers of state industrial and agricultural enterprises. There were some basic social differences between the top Party elite and the lower Party functionaries and state officials in terms of privileges, influence, authority, and responsibility. This group of lower Party and state officials was bound together by the economic privileges and prestige that went with their positions and membership in, or sympathy for, the Party; they all benefited from the regime and enjoyed educational and economic advantages denied the rest of the population. Below this group were the rank-and-file Party members, whose leadership role was constitutionally guaranteed. Aside from the prestige enjoyed as Party members, however, their privileges and economic benefits did not differ much from the next class in Communist structure of Albanian society, namely the workers. Constituting about 15 percent of the total population, the working class, styled by the regime as the leading class, was created mostly after the Communist seizure of power and was composed almost wholly of peasant stock. This group, probably more so than the peasant masses, has been under constant pressure to work harder, to produce more, and to work longer, often even after their normal schedules were completed. Although the regular work schedule was eight hours, workers were called upon to perform volunteer labor and to overfulfill norms. There was very little chance for rest and recreation. Before 1967 the workers could take advantage of religious holidays, which provided some time for recreation, but since then all religious holidays have been banned. The only legal holidays were New Year's Day; Republic Day, on January 11; May Day; Army Day, on July 10; and Independence and Liberation Days, on November 28 and 29, respectively. There were, however, a few local socialist holidays connected with the liberation of the areas by the partisan formations in 1944. The workers also received two-week paid vacations annually. The largest class, that of the peasants, represented about two-thirds of the total population and, according to Communist dogma, was allied with the working class and led by it. The regime's policy of complete agricultural collectivization has been distressing for the peasant class. A lover of his land, irrespective of its size, and of his independence, the peasant was deprived of his farmland, except for a tiny plot, and herded into a collective. His income in the collective was only on the subsistence level. Collective peasants were called upon to perform 300 to 350 workdays a year.