CUBA: Unions, Balancing Full Employment and Reforms

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Apr 29 1996 (IPS) - The Cuban Workers Centre (CTC), the only union on the island, is up against a tough challenge: to defend the government supported economic reform without giving up on the socialist dream of full employment.

A group of 1,900 delegates at the Union’s 17th congress last week in Havana, decided this would be the the main aim forthe next few years.

Paradoxically, the same meeting discussed the reorganisation of the national workforce, which will mean adjustments in employment in order to reach efficiency in State companies.

“It will not be easy. To assume an official position and, at the same time, confront the phenomenon of unemployment for the first time in several decades,” an Education Workers Union representative told IPS.

Though the CTC has tried to sell itself as independent of the Communist Party and the government, in practice it holds a line well within the parameters of official policy.

The business reform underway is part of a broad package of measures applied by the authorities on the island to alleviate the effects of the worst economic crisis since the 1959 revolution.

In the current decade the Cubans have suffered the consequences of a 34.2 percent fall in Gross National Product between 1989 and 1993, surviving a dizzying fall in value of the national currency and the closure or semi-paralysis of many businesses and industries.

This resulted in underemployment, temporary or permanent changes in jobs, receiving a salary for staying at home, or lastly, unemployment, which official figures place at seven percent of the economically active population.

Pedro Ross Leal, secretary-general of the CTC and member of the governing Communist Party Political Bureau, said the untions “will have to fight for economic efficiency and the maintenance of social justice.”

However, it is even recognised in official circles that the moments of full employment corresponded to the creation of guidelines without productive back-up, which in the long term create serious economic distortions.

The CTC claims 4.6 million Cubans work in the state civil, cooperative and private sectors, with between 600,000 and 800,000 thousand drawing a full salary for working at only 40 or 50 percent capacity.

Specialist predictions state that some 750,000 pwople could be redeployed to other posts or may find themselves out of work as a consequence of the case by case analysis by the companies and workplaces.

“If we don’t fight for efficiency, we are not defending the workers rights, and firstly their right to work,” said a delegate in the central province of Villa Clara, 300 kilometres from Havana.

Apparently, the union leaders are counting on the reanimation of the national economy and achieving efficiency in state companies along with the development of joint ventures with foreign capital eventually leading to the creation of new jobs.

The documents presented at the union congress demand the active participation of unions in the labour reorganisation with the aim of making sure no worker is unprotected, helping in their relocation or supporting their repositioning or retraining for another job.

The representatives of 2,793,430 unionised workers also looked at several ways of improving attention to pensioners, female and younger workers.

“We are not calling for pay increases but the revaluation of the Cuban peso, so that the values of salaries increase,” said Ross.

During the last five years the value of the peso has vacilated in relation to the US dollar, going from five to one, to 140 to one in 1994, falling to around 21 to one at present.

Though education and health have remained free, the workers have had to fall back on their savings, work overtime or on the black market to survive on an average salary of 200 pesos.

“The final salary increases in Cuba depend on the economic- productive results and this variant is supported by the unions” read the CTC report to the congress.

The CTC approved alternatives to a general pay increase include the extension of the mobile salary system already in place in tourism, oil, nickel sectors as well as in entities associated with foreign capital.

The mobile salary, unlike a fixed income per worker independent of productivity, calls for rapid adjustment of the island’s legislation which specialists criticise for its paternalistic outlook.