Madrid/“In my 71 years of life I never thought the day would come when I would not have money to buy food.” This statement, from a veteran employee of Camagüey, Ernesto Bárzaga Sánchez, administrator of the provincial Construction Materials Company (EMC), has not been collected by an opposition organization or any independent media, but by the newspaper itself. Workersin a long report published this sunday dedicated to non-payment of salaries on the Island.
The body of the single union affirms that the situation, which has been going on for years, occurs especially in the agricultural sector and in commerce and “seems to have broken the camel’s back.” The ruling is devastating: Workers found “that the Collective Bargaining Agreement is ignored as a legal instrument with legal force so that there are no delays in the payment of wages”, that “the analyzes of the administrations are null or sterile, as recorded in the minutes of management councils” and that “it goes so far as to violate what is established by the banking system” of accrediting the magnetic card three days before the payment date.
The reasons given to the newspaper by an official are weak. “File errors, communication problems, electrical failures, system crashes can occur,” listed Michel Lara Mejías, director of the Banco de Crédito y Comercio on Isla de la Juventud. This adds “lack of personnel in the accounting area, insufficient funds in the account or that the director was not there to sign”, but assures that in no case is it due to “lack of cash”, since “one hundred percent of the state and budgeted entities are banked in our Bank.”
In that special municipality, non-payment has occurred, according to data at the end of 2024, nothing less than in “hydraulic resources companies, property maintenance, commerce, public buses, forestry, flora and fauna, port services, tobacco, music and shows and workshops.”
From Camagüey they give more specific figures: 675 workers affected by the “salary delay”, with 116 months accumulated between last year and this one with three weeks left to finish. Yaneisi González Toscano, a specialist in the Provincial Directorate of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, points to 13 state entities that fail to pay salaries, among which the Provincial Company of Communal Services stands out, of the Domestic Trade Business Group of the Ministry of Agriculture and, the worst of all, the aforementioned Construction Materials Company.
“I live with my sister with an intellectual disability and due to the lack of salary for months we have had dark moments and survived thanks to my son, not counting the times of borrowing money”
The official offers the reasons as “lack of liquidity, raw materials and accounts receivable.” These are pale explanations compared to the testimonies compiled by the official newspaper, such as the one cited above from Bárzaga Sánchez, who had to turn to her brother to survive.
“Here at the EMC there is an impoverished union section. Since we don’t have custodians, I assume that task and the reception one,” the man lamented before Workerswho does not omit in his story that “due to lack of money” Bárzaga has to walk the six kilometers that separate his home from work every day. And his story continues: “To collect an account of 88,000 pesos from the Geomining Company, it took two years. I told the director and the economics officer that I was going to use my vacation to carry out the procedures and eradicate that debt and I did so.”
A colleague of his, also a specialist in the same construction company, Ramón García Chicoy, reflects a similar panorama: “I live with my sister with an intellectual disability and due to the lack of salary for months we have had dark moments and survived thanks to my son, not counting the times of borrowing.”
“Bárzaga has been in that company for 25 years and Chicoy for 39, the sense of belonging keeps them going, although they are owed six months of salary; others have left,” he says about them. Workers. The director of the EMC herself, Aida Regla Antúnez Parrado, is aware of the situation, and in this regard, she asserts: “Despite the efforts, we have low income and a bad financial situation. In January 2025 we owed salaries to 302 workers for the previous year – who on average we employ in our 10 base business units (UEB) -; today only 120 remain, insufficient strength.”
In terms of “accounts receivable”, they have more than 1,200,000 pesos outstanding, the official continues, and in four municipalities – Florida, Vertientes, Esmeralda and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes – there are UEBs that owe no less than one year and two months of salary. In Céspedes and Florida, specifically, a similar debt accumulates: 100,000 pesos in each municipality.
One of the solutions, relocating employees to other units, is not working. In the EMC of Camagüey, Antúnez Parrado indicated, they have only managed to “relocate” 18, “the rest are no longer on staff.” Where have they been relocated? “In Communal Services making niches and sarcophagi.”
Regarding trade, the Cuban Workers’ Union (CTC) registers “incidents” especially in Granma, Camagüey, Matanzas and Santiago de Cuba, which it explains based on the “instability of offers, inputs and levels of activity”, in addition to “the insufficiency of human resources and accounting teams, and the competition of the non-state sector.”
More than 20,000 workers in the sector were affected by the delay in their salaries at the beginning of the year, he said. Workersalthough the number has already decreased to 3,000. There are also “five entities that have failed to pay for more than five months, which leads to illegalities, social and labor indiscipline.”
They give as causes of non-payments “the lack of production and economic efficiency, in addition to “debts, accounts receivable, deficit of accounting personnel and human resources, and competition from the private sector.”
If construction and commerce go badly, the sugar sector does not look better. In it, payment delays persist between five months and one year by the Azcuba Business Group, especially in Camagüey, Las Tunas, Granma and Santiago de Cuba.
Specifically, José Antonio Pérez, from the Organizing Commission of the 22nd Congress of the CTC, affirms that there are six entities dedicated to producing syrup that “ran out of fuel and do not honor the payment of salaries in plants such as Bartolomé Masó and Roberto Ramírez, in Granma, and Argentina and Brazil, in Camagüey.”
Without offering more numbers, they give as causes of non-payments “the lack of production and economic efficiency, in addition to “debts, accounts receivable, deficit of accounting personnel and human resources, and competition from the private sector, which attracts professionals with higher salaries.” One of the consequences is clearly pointed out by the official: “In rural areas this situation takes on a critical dimension, due to the lack of motivation in those who work day after day in the field, which translates into fluctuation towards other entities and urban areas, and consequent increase in idle and depopulated lands.”
He had already had an impact on non-payments in the sugar sector before. Workers. Last September, he highlighted in another report the millionaire sums of money that the State owed to cane producers. Similarly, last month, another extensive report in the CTC newspaper collected the complaints of the National Association of Innovators and Rationalizers (Anir), the organization that brings together people who present creations or ideas that improve the results of an economic sector, the main one being, precisely, the non-payment of salaries.
The union body recognizes that “the salary has to be supported by the creation of goods and services and its non-payment cannot be left in union reports,” and ends its note with a question: “Where then is the union defense based on the rights of those affected, if the salaries of a good part of Cubans are so insufficient that they border on the symbolic?”
