Wow! This is a considerably higher percentage of p[ublic service jobs
being made redundant that is being contemplated in the UK -- where the
Trade Union Congress are already making direct threats of massive strike
action even before any details of government department curt-backs or real
numbers are known.
Keith
. At 08:46 14/09/2010 -0400, you wrote:
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0049_01CB53E9.4B2CBE60"
Content-Language: en-us
Cuba to cut 500,000 from state payroll
By Marc Frank in Havana
<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4cd17af4-bf5e-11df-965a-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=rss>http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4cd17af4-bf5e-11df-965a-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=rss
Published: September 13 2010 19:59 | Last updated: September 13 2010 19:59
Communist <http://www.ft.com/indepth/cuba>Cuba will shift hundreds of
thousands of state employees to the private sector in 2011 as the
government prunes more than 500,000 workers from its payroll.
The official trade union federation said on Monday that eventually more
than a million jobs would be cut.
Job options will be increased and broadened with new forms of non-state
employment, among them leasing land, co-operatives and self-employment
absorbing hundreds of thousands of workers in the coming years,the union
statement said.
According to a document circulating within the higher ranks of the
Communist party in preparation for the reorganisation of the labour
forceannounced on Monday, 465,000 non-state jobs would be created in 2011,
of which some 250,000 would fall under the category of new licences for
self-employment.
Self-employment, begun in the 1990s, covers everything from family-run
restaurants to car repair shops, construction and artisans. Non-state jobs
included workers hired by the self-employed, ex-state employees such as
taxi drivers who would move to a leasing arrangement, and employees of
small state businesses that went over to a co-operative form of
administration, said sources who have seen the plan.
The plan represents the most important reform undertaken by President Raúl
Castro since he
<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/39768ee4-6b06-11dd-b613-0000779fd18c,dwp_uuid=3d806e42-a627-11db-937f-0000779e2340.html>took
over from his brother Fidel in early 2008, and the biggest shift to
private enterprise since all 58,000 small businesses were nationalised in 1968.
Raúl Castro has fostered discussion in the media and grassroots meetings
on the problems afflicting the socialist economy, but he has made mostly
minor changes up till now. The exception has been agriculture, where Mr
Castro has leased state lands to 100,000 farmers and loosened the state
straitjacket on sale of farm inputs and produce.
The government reported more than 85 per cent of the Cuban labour force,
or about 5m people, worked for the state at the close of 2009. There were
591,000 workers in the private sector, with most of those being farmers
and 143,000 self-employed.
The massive layoff of 10 per cent of the state labour force is scheduled
to begin in October and stretch through March. New licences for
self-employment would be issued beginning in October , the sources said.
Geographical limitations on self-employment and prohibitions on obtaining
bank credits, doing business with state entities or hiring labour outside
the family, would be eliminated.
Better accounting would be demanded of businesses, and the way they were
taxed would be changed. As well as taxes on income, the self-employed
would pay a sales tax and 25 per cent social security tax for themselves
and each employee, the sources said, while co-operatives would pay a tax
on profits and social security.
The state expected tax revenue from the self-employed to jump from 250m
pesos ($9.4m) this year to about a billion pesos in 2011, the sources said.
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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