CUBA-LABOUR: Self-Employed Workers to Create New Official Unions

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Nov 21 1995 (IPS) - Cuba’s Central Workers federation will open its doors to self-employed workers, in a government attempt to control a labour force that could mushroom to 500,000 over the next few months.

According to Pedro Ross, the general secretary of what is Cuba’s only national union federation, people with their own small businesses will be able to gradually begin to join in early December, starting with the most well-defined occupations.

Although the government has not offered much information, it has been announced that self-employed workers will be organised according to their trades, rather than in a new union that would cover them all.

“No one has asked me if I’m interested,” was the response of a 48-year-old woman who sells peanut nougat on a Havana street corner.

Others have reacted with less hostility, but insist on their right to decide, while debating the role the union should play.

“It could be a mere formality, or another form of controlling people who are working without a licence,” said a pensioner who fixes gas stoves in private residences, after years of being a member of a union that he said always responded to official interests.

According to the Ministry of Labour and Security, by October some 203,000 people had licences to exercise in 160 trades, ranging from martial arts instructor to small private restaurants and cafes.

Authorised for the first time in 1977, the list of occupations in which small private businesses were allowed to operate was greatly expanded in September 1993 as part of a package of government reforms designed to alleviate the five year crisis that still has Cuba in its grips.

Last July, authorisation was extended to university graduates, but under the condition that they limit themselves to the list of permitted activities, and that they never exercise their professions privately.

Experts see the expansion as an important alternative in the face of a “rationalisation” – cutting – of thousands of jobs in an aim for greater efficiency.

Local authorities say some 5,000 requests for licences are received every month. But the number issued remains limited – in the case of small restaurants and cafes, only 500 of more than 1,000 applicants have been granted licences.

But those who are refused licences do not automatically stop their activities, or close cafes that are already functioning.

That is one of the main concerns of licencees, who want authorities to take the necessary measures to keep those who are working illegally from presenting unfair competition.

“It is not fair that while we pay for the licences and pay our taxes, the illegals continue to operate, cheating the treasury and authorities,” said Alejandra Alonso, who works with her brother in one of Havana’s small private cafes.

Municipal officials say 95 percent of the 10,000 fines meted out this year in Havana went to people working illegally on their own.

Some call for a strengthening and professionalisation of the system of inspections, in order to better protect those who work within the law.

Analysts say the new move towards unionisation is a government attempt to curb the growth of the sector, which could bring with it the appearance of political demands.

According to the secretary of the Communist Party in Havana, Esteban Lazo, “the more than 203,000 Cubans working on their own might make great individual profits, but they will never substitute the work of the state in guaranteeing the basic needs of the population, and milk for children.”

Armando, a street vendor who sells cold meats in Havana, agrees that “there are things that only the state can guarantee.” But he adds that “it is almost illogical” for small businesses like his “to be state-run, with centralised control.”

CUBA-LABOUR: Self-Employed Workers to Create New Official Unions

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Nov 21 1995 (IPS) - Cuba’s Central Workers federation will open its doors to self-employed workers, in a government attempt to control a labour force that could mushroom to 500,000 over the next few months.
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