What you describe sounds a lot like the labor-day (trudoden) accounting system for collective farms in the Soviet Union. They actually did pay wages to the workers according to the number of labor-days worked. (Note: It wasn't literally one day -- harder tasks could earn more than one labor-day per day.)
If one farm needed some temporary labor, it would've been easier to trade labor-days with another farm than to settle in cash.
I don't know about other Soviet bloc countries, but I would not be surprised if they used a similar system. 25 years ago would've been towards the end of the Communist era, which would also explain why it was fading.
If one farm needed some temporary labor, it would've been easier to trade labor-days with another farm than to settle in cash.
I don't know about other Soviet bloc countries, but I would not be surprised if they used a similar system. 25 years ago would've been towards the end of the Communist era, which would also explain why it was fading.