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State workers in Cuba are asked to vote for layoffs
21.09.2010
By WILL WEISSERT
Associated Press
HAVANA -- Cuba is calling workers across the island to special meetings so labor leaders can brief them on half a million government layoffs coming in the next six months and suggest how fired workers can make a living.
The ``workers' assemblies'' that began on Sept. 15 include hundreds of meetings with state employees in union halls, government auditoriums and even basements or garages of state-run companies, according to a report Monday in the state-run labor union newspaper Trabajadores.
The proceedings are closed and attendees so far have been tight-lipped about what is being discussed. But Salvador Valdes Mesa, head of the nearly 3 million-member Cuban Workers Confederation, said they are designed to tell workers about ``the labor policies that will govern the country in order to achieve the structural changes the economy needs.''
``We are confronting the need to make our economy more efficient, better organize production, increase worker productivity and identify the reserves we have,'' Valdes Mesa was quoted as telling transportation and port employees in the province of Holguin.
During the meetings, workers are asked to vote in favor of the reforms, meaning they will be officially endorsed by some of the very Cubans who may lose their jobs.
Cuba announced on Sept. 13 that it would lay off 500,000 workers by March and loosen state controls on private enterprise so that many of those fired can find new jobs. It said it would also beef up the tax code and revamp state pay scales to better reward good job performance.
Cuban leader Raúl Castro warned in April that as many as 1 million Cuban state employees -- a fifth of a total island work force of 5.1 million -- may be superfluous.
The president has not commented publicly since the reforms were announced, though he has said authorities have no intention of abandoning the socialist state they spent decades building.
Instead, preparing workers for what's to come has fallen to Valdes Mesa's union, which is allied with the Communist Party and the only one the government allows.
Some of the meetings include just a few employees from a single office. Others involve hundreds from a whole city neighborhood.
An internal Communist Party document detailing the unprecedented overhaul envisions a radically reshaped economy, freshly legalized private cooperatives and a state payroll trimmed of many idle or unproductive workers.
The document says many laid-off workers will be urged to form private cooperatives. Others will go to work for foreign-run companies or set up their own small businesses in fields such as transportation, food and house rental.
Already, 144,000 Cubans work for themselves and 823,000 overall are part of the private sector, though that includes vast farm cooperatives run in accord with state administrative decisions.
The government still employs the other 84 percent of the official work force.
Government workers take home an average of about $20 per month. The layoffs will affect all corners of the government except those considered ``indispensable.''