Cuban workers union reviews salary system to boost economic reforms

CUBA: The Cuban Workers’ Central Union (CTC) was attending meetings at state-run companies across the country to review the salary system to help push forward economic reforms, a CTC official said Thursday.

Milagros Perez, a member of the CTC national board, said the CTC commission members attended the meetings to detect discrepancies between salary and productivity at every state company.

Perez said workers, particularly union leaders, should “update” the salary system to make it more productivity-oriented in accordance with the principle upheld by President Raul Castro, which aims at raising the productivity and efficiency of local economies.

Cubans earn an average of 18 convertible pesos (20 U.S. dollars) per month, which isn’t sufficient enough to cover their rising living costs.

The equalitarian and stagnated salary system is considered a key cause of low efficiency and productivity in the Caribbean island country.

Since taking office in 2008, Castro started to work out measures to help the country out of the economic crisis that has affected the island since 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had been a secured market for Cuban exports.

The Cuban government first implemented the “payment for results” model in agriculture, a sector considered “strategic for national security,” and authorities are now studying how to transfer the pattern to other sectors. Xinhua