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FROM
CUBA
No unemployment under Socialism
HAVANA, January (www.cubanet.org) - There
are no unemployed in Cuba. The
government's Newspeak calls those without
a job either "available" or, by
a locution as convoluted as the logic behind
it, "interrupted."
The differences between the two are not
subtle; "interrupted" is understood
to be someone who lost "his labor links,"
another gem of government Newspeak, relatively
recently, and who therefore, still has some
privileges, such as the right to be paid
his full salary for the first month after
being laid off and 60% of it thereafter,
until his former employer, inevitably some
government agency, reassigns him to a new
job.
There is no such commitment toward someone
who is "available," however. He
is on his own as far as finding a new job,
and may have been out of one for any length
of time.
The two terms came up after the disappearance
of the Soviet subsidies to the Cuban economy,
in the early 90s. The statutes regulating
the status of both "interrupteds"
and "availables" date to 1992
and 1994.
Before then, overemployment was the norm;
State enterprises typically employed more
people than necessary, in common with other
Socialist economies.
Unemployment, according to the Marxist
creed, is a particular evil of capitalism,
and thus unknown under Communism.
Versión
original en español
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