MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Cuban trade unions “guarantors” of the elimination of 500.000 state jobs

President Raul Castro on crusade to save the Socialist model

Layoffs planned to eliminate some 500,000 state jobs in Cuba this year got underway this week, according to the island’s only legal workers’ organization. The official weekly Trabajadores cited a speech by CTC chief Salvador Valdes in the eastern province of Holguin, in which he said it was the union’s responsibility to “be the guarantor” of the process of labour reorganization.

Valdes said that while this is “an administrative process,” the union must keep watch to make sure it complies with what has been established for each step of the process to reduce state labour rolls.

The Cuban government estimates that in 2011 it will definitively eliminate 146,000 state jobs, while some 351,000 employees adapting to other forms of independent employment as part of a program of reforms and austerity measures. Of those 351,000, at least 100,000 will enter the field of self-employment, according to official estimates.

The draconian decision implemented by the government run unions follows on the historic speech of President Raul Castro who warned that “either we reform, or we go over the cliff and it’s the end of the revolution”

The plan, which foresees the reduction of “inflated staffs” and the incorporation of 1.8 million workers into the non-state sector over a five-year period, will be ratified by the ruling Communist Party at its 6th Congress, set for late April.

Valdes stressed that the CTC, as the workers’ representative, must “avoid violations, paternalism, favouritism and any other negative tendencies”.

He also urged the government “to convince them (the workers) of the necessity of applying these measures for the sake of the nation’s economy, ensuring that, whatever happens, no one will be left unprotected”.

The expansion of the private sector in Cuba, with the possibility of starting small companies and businesses, is one of the chief measures undertaken by the government of President Raul Castro to “modernize” the “Socialist model” and deal with the country’s ongoing economic crisis.

In 2009 Cuba had a total of 143,800 self-employed workers. The government hopes that in 2011 some 250,000 more workers will enter that sector, and that this will boost government tax revenues by 1 billion US dollars in 2012.