Current News

Reforms in Cuba and Disinformation Concerning Layoffs
- Enver Villamizar -

The Canadian monopoly-owned media have been reporting that the Cuban government is set to lay off 500,000 public employees. The way this is reported suggests that this is a step towards capitalist restoration in Cuba. In a September 19 editorial, the Globe and Mail wrote: "The Cuban government's surprise announcement this week that it is laying off 500,000 state employees could trigger unrest, but the reforms are a welcome first step."

The working class and oppressed peoples of the world would indeed be concerned should capitalism be restored in Cuba but this is the morbid preoccupation of the rich with defeat and has no resemblance to what the Cubans are doing. Of course, a return to capitalism is what the imperialists have been trying to put in place in Cuba since the revolution right up until the present, using economic, political and military aggression. However wishing for this and having it happen are two different things.

Writing about the public sector layoffs in Cuba, the monopoly-owned media see what they want to see. It is not concerned for the well-being of the Cuban people, especially its workers, just as it is not concerned for the well-being of the Canadian working class. Instead it reports from an anti-worker perspective in which the interests of the global monopolies are synonymous with the interests of the nation, while the workers are merely a cost of production.

The measures announced at the 5th Session of the 7th Legislature of the National Assembly of the Peoples Power on August 1 by Raúl Castro, President of the Councils of State and Ministers are definitely significant changes in Cuba. But what is their aim? According to the Globe and Mail it is to restore capitalism and impose a capitalist labour market model onto the Cuban working class. According to Castro, the measures are aimed at "preserving and developing our social system and making it sustainable in the future."

The essence of the reforms is presented by Castro in this way: "During the initial phase, which we plan to conclude in the first three months of next year, we will modify the work and salary regulations of surplus workers from a group of central state administration agencies, suppressing the paternalistic approaches that discourage the need to work to live and thus reducing the unproductive costs entailed in equal pay regardless of the number of years worked, and a guaranteed salary for long periods to individuals who are not working."

Along with these changes Castro re-affirmed that no one will be left to fend for themselves: "In adopting these agreements, we do so on the basis that nobody will be left to their own fate and that, via the social security system, the socialist state will give the support needed to live a life of dignity to those people who are genuinely not in a position to work and who are the sole means of support for their families. We have to erase forever the notion that Cuba is the only country in the world in which people can live without working."

In addition, Castro states: "The Council of Ministers also agreed to extend the exercise of self-employment and its utilization as another job alternative for surplus workers, by eliminating various existing prohibitions on the granting of new licenses and the marketing of certain products, thus making labour contracts more flexible."

In this way, the Cuban government is trying to deal with a problem of a need for increased productivity and efficiency from the Cuban working class to defend the self-reliance of the nation. Without these measures, Castro pointed out, the government will not be able to: "raise wages, increase exports and replace imports, to grow in terms of food production and, definitively, sustain the enormous social costs that are essentially part of our socialist system, a sphere in which we are also bound to be rational, saving much more without sacrificing quality."

What can be taken from these statements is that the Cuban government does not view the working class as a cost of production to be attacked in order to increase profits for a tiny elite. Instead the Cubans are arguing that the working class is a productive force which creates the added value the society relies upon for its current and future standard of living. This productive capacity needs to be constantly improved, if the society is to move forward and not stagnate.

The Globe and Mail and the interests it represents do not want to admit that the neo-liberal economic model is a disaster for the entire planet and that there are other ways to address problems of the economy in a manner which resolves them in favour of the people's interests. Cuba's entire experience defies empty chatter about economic models while the imperialists impose their dictate onto the world irrespective of the conditions and requirements of different countries and peoples. The Cubans have succeeded in maintaining socialism precisely because they defend the revolutionary interest under all conditions and circumstances. Far from accepting nonsense about foreign models they tackle the real problems which arise in life itself.

The Globe and Mail does not want to discuss the fact that the Cuban government is trying to deal with a real social problem which has emerged; the need to strengthen the ethic, through legal means, that it is through hard work and sacrifice that a socialist society is built, not through going into debt, squandering precious human and natural resources or harbouring elements who have become complacent about the need to work in order to live. In other words these measures are aimed at eliminating the negative aspects which have been given rise to in the Cuban economy in the course of ensuring that the people's rights were provided with a guarantee during the Special Period and since then. Based on the measures being implemented at this time, we can be confident that these rights will be provided with a guarantee in the future as well.

(TML Daily, September 24, 2010)