HAVANA, Cuba.- For a long time, the Cuban rulers played the role of “good guys in the movie” in terms of employment. There was a job available for each citizen who reached working age, while that condition was brandished as a supposed advantage of the socialist system.
Of course, what the ideologues of the Cuban nomenclature did not say was that they applied a maxim that has stood the test of time: inefficiency creates full employment.
In unprofitable companies and entities, with inflated insoles and a large part of its labor group without real work content for an eight-hour day, there was always room for one more worker. In short, dad State with the help of the external “friend” on duty (almost always the Soviet Union) was in charge of solving the problem.
For some years, more or less when the ruler Raúl Castro began to talk about updating the Cuban economic model, the leaders of the Castro economy incorporated into their discourse, and even put into practice in a limited way, a process of reducing inflated templates in state entities and companies.
But, there was so much of the workforce to be relocated or classified as interrupted, that apparently the leadership of power chose not to take the process to its final consequences.
Now, during the sessions of the National Assembly of People’s Power, the Minister of Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil, referring to the measures that will be taken with a view to trying to reduce the budget deficit, said that the island “is also facing a resizing of the budget sector, optimizing its functionality, as it does not correspond to the levels of economic activity in the country, and where there are not a few inflated staff and underemployment”.
And to complete the idea pointed that “this resizing, which will involve job relocations, among other responses, will always be done from the unalterable principles of social justice of our model, and promoting that workers are employed in jobs that are useful to themselves and society”,
We imagine the fear of the hundreds or thousands of workers in the bulky budgeted sector at these statements by the “chief of staff” of the Castro economy. Being relocated labor means having to accept the place that the authorities propose to any worker. Otherwise, that is, if the new position is not accepted, the worker is declared interrupted, with payment of 60% of the basic salary for the first month, and from then on total salary is unprotected if it is considered that the non-acceptance was unjustified.
It has transpired, for example, that many workers, of both sexes, who today work in offices of the Ministry of Transport, will have to leave those positions to become transport inspectors. In other words, they will have to go to the busiest bus stops to deal with passengers and drivers of buses and state cars, and have the latter pick up passengers if they have seats available. What a piece of cake!
But no one thinks that this resizing that is now being announced will remain only in the budget sector. This would be the first step to later extend it to the business sector. Reports abound that insist on the labor force deficit in key sectors such as construction and agriculture. And while that happens, the offices of companies in those sectors of the economy remain full of employees.
The time is coming for it to be revealed in this film that the role of “good” that Castroism claimed was nothing more than a farce.
OPINION ARTICLE
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