LABOUR-CUBA: No Loud Demands to Be Heard in May Day Celebration

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Apr 27 2001 (IPS) - Although workers in Cuba would like better wages and full employment, like workers all over the world, those demands do not tend to be voiced in this socialist country’s May 1st celebrations.

This year, Cuba’s Central Workers Union (CTC), the only authorised labour confederation, scheduled the conclusion of its 18th Congress to coincide with International Labour Day, which is celebrated on May 1st.

At the end of last year, the average monthly wage stood at 249 pesos, 12 percent up from the 1999 average, but equivalent to less than 12 dollars in the government exchange bureaux.

“Since the raise they gave us I’m earning 400 pesos, but that is still not enough, and believe me, I’m glad my kids go to school for free and that health services are free,” Carmen Rosa Arias, the vice-principal of a primary school, told IPS.

Arias said a friend who left her job three years ago was now making as much as 700 to 800 dollars a month by renting out two rooms in her house.

The enormous disparity in the incomes of the two women exemplifies situations recognised by the CTC in a background paper used in the discussions held prior to the CTC Congress, in which more than three million people have reportedly taken part, and in which many workers have complained that it is impossible to get by on today’s wages.

Certain economic reforms – the free circulation of the dollar and the authorisation of private initiative and private rentals of housing units and rooms, for example – have given rise to “contradictions and inequalities” that did not exist in the past, says the CTC document.

The trade union stressed the need “to gradually strengthen the value of work and of its remuneration, as a basic element in the well-being and quality of life of workers.”

The government, meanwhile, argues that it has already taken a big step by adopting a policy of wage raises in 1999, which so far has been applied in sectors like education and health.

By late last year, around one million workers had received wage raises, while another 1.2 million were granted performance-based incentives in freely convertible hard currency.

“It is a way of attenuating the differences,” said Pedro Ross, the secretary-general of the CTC, who told the foreign press accredited in Cuba that a generalised wage reform would be implemented in the future as part of a programme known as the “system of business improvement”.

That programme, currently being applied in around 100 firms, is seen by the CTC as the only route to success for socialist state- run companies. Workers are playing a key role in implementing the new programme.

The role played by the trade unions as an effective counterweight to the administrations of Cuba’s state-owned companies is as essential as the key aspects of efficiency, quality production, reliable book-keeping, and oversight, say experts.

Workers warned at assemblies held in the run-up to the Congress, however, that guaranteeing full employment – another demand by Cuban workers – ran counter to the goals of rationalising production and making administration more efficient.

According to official figures, unemployment stood at 5.5 percent of the roughly five million people of working age in late 2000, although it ran as high as 13 to 15 percent in eastern portions of Cuba.

Experts say the policy of full employment is a complex gain of the Cuban revolution of 1959, because it led to under-employment and low productivity prior to the 1990s.

Thus, the policy must in first place be based on the creation of productive jobs and fully justified salaries, in order to avoid “financial imbalances,” the sources say.

The CTC Congress will run from Saturday through Tuesday, and will be attended by 1,900 Cuban delegates and representatives of 150 trade unions from 60 countries.

The gathering will approve a political declaration by the Cuban labour movement, to be made public in the Plaza of the Revolution, where the May Day celebrations are traditionally held.

Processions similar to the one that will take place in Havana, which are normally led by President Fidel Castro and other high government officials, will commemorate the first of May in the country’s 14 provincial capitals.

The last CTC Congress, in 1996, concluded with calls for a stronger role for the country’s trade unions, and more efficient public enterprises.