I happened to overhear a scrap of conversation between two nurses at a clinic near my home. "This coming week they will publish the list..." said one, while the other looked at her with alarm and answered something I didn't manage to catch. A few yards further on a taxi driver, talking into his cell phone, said, "I was saved, there are a ton of drivers on the list, but not me." The issue began to puzzle me. Although on this Island there are no shortages of lists and inventories -- in some we are forced to appear and others they won't even let us peek at -- one of them is especially upsetting for my compatriots. I knew they were talking about the lists of those who will be unemployed, pages full of names of those workers who exceed the needs in each workplace.
About 25% of the current workforce could end up on the street after the layoffs already under way. Some employees have been advised a week before their company runs out of money to pay them, and they have been without any unemployment compensation to support themselves until they can find another job. Faced with the dilemma of staying home or working in agriculture or construction, the majority choose to dive into domestic life in the hopes of new opportunities. They figure they can work offering illegal manicures, or preparing food to order, and it might pay better dividends than bending their backs over a furrow or raising brick walls.
Today, the issue of layoffs is a worry shared by all Cubans, because at least one member of each family will be affected by the cuts. However, the official press only talks about the layoffs in Greece and Spain, telling us about the call for a general strike in Madrid or the collapse of the economy in Athens. In the meantime, popular rumors feed off the personal stories of those who have already appeared on the frightful lists. In workplaces employees crowd around the wall, running their index fingers over the lists expecting to come across their own names. No one can take to the streets to protest what has happened, nor will they appear on the TV that only mentions unemployment when it happens thousands of miles away.
Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.
Follow Yoani Sanchez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/yoanisanchez
An approximate calculus of the open, hidden and latent unemployment could surpass the number of 2.0 million people unemployed in today's Cuba of the total of 4.9 million in the work force, of which 4.0 millions work for the government. This is equivalent to an astonishing 40% of the labor force.
Thus, drivers are laid off, and are offered jobs in agriculture or construction.
Middle administrators are laid off, to save on air conditioning and lighting their workplaces.
While here in the west we prefer the invisible hand (read corporate masters) to decide to cut back on production or services or benefits or middle layers of management, in Cuba the hand is visible: the government.
If the visible hand is evil to do this, so is the invisible one.
Before castrofascism we had same hurricanes or worst, same cyclical world crisis but we had no shortages of food but exported food and had one of the world higher quality food consumption averages according UN and FAO. We could show such statistics because we had our productive land cultivated 100% and we was a semi industrial country that produced richness and could afford to buy enough oil to keep our people lighted...... today the "visible" hand that destroy the country only work 16% of Cuba's productive land and can't produce richness because this criminal regime is afraid of allowing the people take care of economical activity and richness production because it could lead to lose the power. That's why regime prefer to bring international capital to take the place of Cubans....... but international capital do not uses to invest the earning in the country but take it out. Castrofascism in such way gives away national richness and keep the people in constant shortage and crisis just because the power is the most important for them.
The regime claim of the virtual achievement of full employment with a 1.6 percent unemployment rate in 2008 is a statistical fabrication.
Today's Cuba is one of those primitive capitalism where people is threaten like animals and regime's only concern is to keep the power and a happy face to show to the world, a world eager to be part of such a profitable state and ready to accept the faked happy face, a face that is kept happy by thousands of "information" thugs.
During the mid-90s equivalent unemployment fluctuated around 25-30%, according to calculations conducted by the Economic Commission of Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), based on the low productivity achieved in 1989.
The official figures of those years are simply incredible. Such miraculous results of creating jobs without new investments, of which no evidence is found in any other country in the world, show the mendacity of the official statistics of the regime.
I can't seem to find much that supports this story.
Perhaps it is deliberately misleading.
That would not be surprising.
He was the one that announce the mass firing.
This is too much narrative and too little fact.
Why is that?