CUBA: Workers to be Given New Jobs, in Downsizing of Sugar Industry

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Jun 19 2002 (IPS) - A major restructuring of Cuba’s sugar industry to make it more competitive and boost yields will pose a new test for the government’s aim to guarantee jobs for everyone, in the midst of the severe financial difficulties plaguing this Caribbean island nation.

Sugar Minister Ulises Rosales del Toro said Tuesday that Cuba has been preparing for several years to downsize and streamline the sugar industry, traditionally the chief engine of the economy, and that employment alternatives were available for the workers who lose their jobs in the process.

An internal memorandum of the Sugar Ministry that came to light early this month stated that 70 of Cuba’s 156 sugar mills were to be shut down, and that 14 others would begin producing sugar cane by-products.

Rosales del Toro said the national sugar industry must begin to perform better in a highly competitive global market characterised by strict quality standards, and that it must bring its costs into line with steadily falling international prices.

“For that reason, we are adapting our industry and our production…we have been working in this direction for four years,” the minister said Tuesday, confirming unofficial reports on the restructuring process.

Although Cuba has an installed capacity to produce 10 million tons of sugar a year, the harvest has averaged four million tons over the past decade.

This year’s yield stood at just 3.6 million tons, slightly up from the 2001 harvest, although sugar export revenues will be 120 million dollars lower this year, because prices have plunged to less than six cents a pound.

According to the Sugar Ministry memorandum, using just 38 percent of the land currently planted in sugar, the annual yield will be increased to four million tons.

“I wouldn’t talk in terms of 70 plants (closing), but in terms of reducing the idle capacity we have, which amounts to around 50 percent of the industry’s total capacity,” said Rosales del Toro.

An estimated 200,000 workers will lose their jobs as a consequence of the downsizing. But the minister said there were many options available to those who will be left unemployed, even within the sugar industry itself.

President Fidel Castro himself admitted last Thursday that reports that the industry would be overhauled had produced “nostalgia” among sugar workers, although he gave his assurances that the process would not bring serious labour difficulties.

Castro said such sentiments were only logical, due to “habit, the joy of seeing the plant start up, seeing the columns of smoke, smelling the molasses. But I’m sure that when they see the new things that they are going to do, the new activities, they will like them even more.

“They will see more promising horizons, new possibilities, and they won’t have to make the slightest sacrifice,” added Castro, in the first official reference to the restructuring. He did not, however, provide any more details on the process.

But an economist consulted by IPS did not rule out the possibility of tension among sugar industry workers, who are estimated at around half a million people.

“In the sugar plantation, the sense of belonging is strong, and the entire lives of families gravitate around the rhythm of the harvest. The change will not be easy,” said the economist, who preferred not to be identified.

The employment alternatives mentioned by Rosales del Toro range from livestock breeding and food production to forestry programmes and jobs in factories that produce sugar cane by-products.

“For us, it is as important to cut costs with a view to becoming competitive as it is to seek new options for workers, and we have been working towards that end,” said the sugar minister.

Workers who lose their jobs due to restructuring measures are paid 100 percent of their wages in the first month after they are laid off, and 60 percent until they find new employment.

But if anyone refuses to accept a new job for which they are physically and mentally apt, without a reason considered justifiable by the administration, they lose their right to unemployment benefits.

According to Ministry of Labour and Social Security statistics, in March there were 12,468 workers who had waited more than three months to be reassigned to a new job, after the companies where they worked underwent downsizing.

Unemployment stood at 4.1 percent of the economically active population of Cuba in 2001, and is projected to drop to 3.5 percent by year-end, Minister of Labour and Social Security Alfredo Morales said in April.

Among the main sources of work offered by the public sector, the biggest employer in this socialist country, are plans for developing urban agriculture and other forms of agricultural production.

Over the past two years, the government has also launched skills training programmes for people under 30, to train social workers and computer technicians.

The economic crisis of the 1990s brought with it the real possibility of losing one’s job, for the first time since the 1959 triumph of the revolution led by Castro.

Factories started to close down, the number of jobs shrank, the island began suffering shortages of energy and raw materials, and in 1995, labour reforms began to be implemented with the aim of streamlining companies to make them more efficient.

Of a total population of 11.2 million, 718,000 people are aged 20 to 24, and 1.02 million are 25 to 29, according to the latest official statistics, from 2000. Of the 3.8 million people who were fully employed in 2000, 77.5 percent worked in state enterprises or agencies.