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• Politics and Government
• 04 / 12 / 2010

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The figures on unproductive workers in the government and its enterprises surprised even some Cuban economists.

The stunning figure was revealed by Cuban leader Raúl Castro himself: The Cuban government and its enterprises might have more than one million excess workers on their payrolls.

That's more than one million unproductive workers, out of what official Cuban figures show is a total of 4.9 million people working in formal jobs in a country of 11.2 million people.

And that's part of the explanation, several economists said, for a calamitously over-centralized and unproductive economy that, for example, forces a tropical island to import an estimated 60 percent of the food its people consume.

The Cuban government has historically insisted on keeping people officially employed, even in unproductive jobs. Unemployment was last reported at 1.6 percent by the National Statistics Office (ONE).

About 95 percent of the jobs in Cuba's formal sector are with the government -- ministries, their agencies and enterprises -- though salaries are so low, averaging about $20 a month, nationwide, that many Cubans also have off-the-books work to make ends meet.

But the figures on excess jobs in the government and its enterprises mentioned by Raúl Castro surprised even some Cuban economists.

``We know there's an excess of hundreds of thousands of workers in the budgeted and enterprise sectors (and) some analysts calculate that the excess of jobs is more than one million,'' he said Sunday in a speech to the Cuban Communist Youth.

There are ``inflated payrolls, very inflated payrolls, terribly inflated payrolls,'' Castro said before adding a reassurance: ``The revolution will not forsake anyone. I will fight to create the conditions so that all Cubans have honorable jobs.''

It was not the first time that Cuban officials have publicly acknowledged the government has far too many employees.

The commerce and restaurant sectors alone in Cienfuegos, Cuba's smallest province, have 1,400 too many employees, according to a recent report in the newspaper Trabajadores, run by the government-controlled Cuban Confederation of Workers (CTC),

The province's education sector also is overstaffed by 1,025, and the sports sector by 500, the newspaper added, quoting Marlén Jiménez, a provincial official of the CTC.

`INHUMANE FORMULAS'

What's more, public health facilities like hospitals and clinics in eastern Granma province alone have 3,000 unnecessary employees, the newspaper quoted Luis Muñoz, a member of the CTC's provincial secretariat, as saying.

```All will remain in their jobs, but depending on the possibilities many will be reassigned to useful and productive jobs,'' the newspaper noted. ``Cuba will never resort to the easy and inhumane formulas of neoliberalism, based on massive
dismissals.''

Gary Maybarduk, who served as counselor for political and economic affairs at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana from 1997-1999, said Castro's comments indicate that he's aware of the massive problems facing an economy battered by the global
crisis, three hurricanes and its own massive inefficiencies.

``The government is beginning to recognize its problems, but isn't ready to do anything about it yet because it has neither the capital nor the ability to create significant numbers of new jobs,'' he said.

``It indicates an incapacity to generate productive jobs that is Olympian, Guiness Book of Records,'' said Jorge Sanguinetty, former president of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy. ``But that's been the Cuban government's problem since 1962.''

By JUAN O. TAMAYO

Source: The Miami Herald