Monday, September 13, 2010

What is Going On Down There? Cuba to cut 500,000 gov't workers, reform salaries It appears Raul Castro is pulling the Cuban economy toward something like a Chinese-style authoritarian/private sector model. By WILL WEISSERT (AP) – 7 hours ago HAVANA — Cuba announced Monday it will cast off at least half a million state employees by mid-2011 and reduce restrictions on private enterprise to help them find new jobs — the most dramatic step yet in President Raul Castro's push to radically remake employment on the communist-run island. Castro suggested during a nationally televised address on Easter Sunday that as many 1 million Cuban workers — about one in five — may be redundant. But the government had not previously laid out specific plans to reduce the work force. The layoffs will start immediately and continue through the first half of next year, according to the nearly 3 million-strong Cuban Workers Confederation — the only labor union allowed by the government. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ipe0no99xWr_oUrAP-q6PnKLj8XgD9I77R981

19 comments:

  1. Seems there is a need for economic reform Doug.

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  2. I read this today also, Doug, and having been to Cuba, I can tell you that half the people I met who were working were mainly standing around - while Capitalism doesn't work and is at fundamental odds with democracy, Communism never worked, either - and Cuba is the archetype; believe me.

    On the other hand, while I was in Cuba, I never saw anyone who was starving. I never saw rich people, but no one was homeless, either.

    Like or hate the Castros, the Revolution delivered on what it promised: Health care for all; housing for all; education for all; and an egalitarian society.

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  3. Ironically during the 80's he was the only one that was able to contain the aids virus...

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  4. There's a lot to be said for not having homelessness, Will, And I'm not too fond of the levels of the yawning gaps between rich corporate types and working class folks in our country, which is many times wider decades before when our economy was stronger.

    I've never seen so many people stranded and looking for handouts in shopping malls and street corners around where I live. We could learn some things from Cuba, education especially, not the whole Big-C Communism trip, but some things.

    It's clear though that reforms are needed or the Castros (both of then actually) wouldn't be making the pronouncements they have. What the potentials in heightened consumerism and disparities in wealth may being to that island, I can only wonder.

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  5. Yes, the full AP article has some interesting statistics Jack. I thought Cuba was doing relatively better, having been open to tourism from more and more countries.

    Didn't know the part about AIDS suppression.

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  6. One would hope he government has a plan for all this laying off.

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  7. I'm impressed they found employment for that many! Our government is in the process of cutbacks and they will often shift one department over while getting rid of another, never mind if they are qualified to do that work or not.

    I assume things still have to tick over in Cuba, so someone will have to do the work by putting in longer hours. They may employ a few of those made redundant as white collar workers, over to the prison system, I understand Cuba has a high prison population.

    Cuba is also one of the highest spenders on education, which I must say surprised me! What's more they have a high percentage of doctors per patient, per bed.

    Maybe like all things, over-staffing goes un-noticed and now it's time for a cull. I doubt the union will have much say in the end. I am surprise that Castro came clean about redundancies as early as Easter. I wonder if they have a redundancy package pay out in Cuba.

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  8. Back in the 80's he had created a housing program I recall it very well as back then it was within the news. I don't think Cuba is removed from what is happening economically within the world. I know a few that have been there Doug and they you hear of how nice it is yet it's one small country that seems all by itself, yet we see it from that vantage.

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  9. The BBC World Service said yesterday that some government departments were told to prepare for a 40% cut! That's brutal stuff---I imagine the Trade Unions, not as powerful as they once were, admittedly, will have a response to all this. It's going to get ugly, judging by the layoff problems we've had in the USA.

    Yes, that's got to be the major question for Cubans, Cassandra--where are all these jobs in the private sector going to emerge from in a society that for fifty years has been distancing itself from private-sector employment?
    And what will be the long term effect for the unemployed?

    Cuba has got high marks for education and access to health care. Literacy rates in Cuba were the highest in Latin America before the Revolution as well, but more education has reached beyond the major cities.

    Yes, if you lay off that many people they have to have a safety net of some kind--- the boom and bust cycles of privatized business is going to be another problem.

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  10. I think that is exactly the reason this is happening right now, Jack. There are literally no more places untouched by globalization.

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  11. It's worth remembering that the Cuban revolution was successful because of large numbers of poverty-stricken individuals and the vast inequality in wealth-distribution. At the end of the day, numbers prevailed - a handful of rich people couldn't buy enough security; the only thing they could do was take their money and run, if they had enough foresight.

    500,000 unemployed Cubans might well equal another revolution, unless they can manage the change.

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  12. Yes, you're right Will. Plus the whole of the business classes in Cuba moved to Miami and later New Jersey and New York starting in the early 60's. And they became very politically powerful in Florida, of course. (Just ask Al Gore.)

    As I intimated in my headline, wither goest Cuba after the Castros are gone? Toward China and economic dynamism? (And inequality.) Or will we see huge numbers of Cubans trying to get off the island? Or will all equalize in the end? A lot can happen.

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  13. Doug, the biggest problem with revolutions is that they take their own course. Castro himself said that many times when they were up in the Sierra, he was worried that the revolution would go spinning off in an unsupportable direction.

    It's anyone's game when power lays in the streets.

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  14. Quite right, Will. History has proven that again and again. Castro himself must appreciate the improbability of his success back then, and the very existence of his regime. Not even the Communist Party of Cuba backed him initially when he had that small guerilla force in the mountains.

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  15. True - and ironically, Castro went to the Eisenhower administration first for help - we turned him down.

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  16. Yes, he met with Nixon as I recall. And we all know how he turned out. Bad move, Ike.

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  17. Yes, and it didn't take long for Castro to figure out that a Socialist revolution would work best for an impoverished nation - the way he looked at it, they'd already tried capitalism -and they saw how that worked out, with the masses living in squalor and a handful whooping it up in the whorehouses and casinos while their housekeepers fought over table-scraps.

    Ernesto "Che" Guevara saw America's moral bankruptcy first - he postulated that it hadn't taken long for America to sell out the vision of Lincoln: "America is a whorehouse where the revolutionary ideals of your forefathers have been bartered and sold on the altar of capitalism," he said.

    True words.

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  18. Yes, that's something the "original intent" conservatives never take into account--how woul the Founding Fathers have reacted and amended the Constitution if more of them could have seen clearly the rise of industrialization and high-finance capitalism.

    I read startling stat the other night. The entire budget of the United States in 1961--on the eve of the Civil War--was only 67 million dollars! That's close to eighty years after the Constitution was framed.

    Yet we have people running about on the capitol mall in funny hats in 2010 pretending that government is the only big dog on the block. As George Lakoff, a professor at Berkeley put it in "The Political Mind", "You can't understand 21st Century politics with an 18th Century brain!"

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