On the trail of Indian labourers in Cuba

[El Presidente]

This is an interesting article and a topic of discussion I have had with Cubans and non Cuban business people doing business in Cuba. 

There has been a brain drain and skilled labour drain in Cuba as many of the brightest and best have found a manner to leave and head overseas. 

Not being able to pay Cubans a comparable wage to foreign workers when both are doing the same job has caused problems in the past. You need only look at the shenanigans that has gone on within the Cuban Cigar industry from factory manager level to executive level. 

Within Habanos s.a, the Cuban side can be doing much the same work as the Imperial Tobacco side...often working in the same Havana building and yet the Cuban side are paid peanuts. 

A cause for resentment? ......how would you feel?

This is not a case of Foreign companies exploiting local workers. By law they have been unable to pay locals a comparable wage. 

Here is an example that I was not aware of. Interesting indeed. 

 

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/09/trail-indian-labourers-cuba-160927152644021.html

The largest ever group of foreign workers is earning more than their Cuban counterparts. Is this fuelling resentment?

by

Ed Augustin

 

Ed Augustin is a filmmaker and journalist. He’s currently shooting a feature film about Guantanamo Bay.

Havana, Cuba - Sparks fly and drills roar, but the restoration of the Manzana de Gomez, an ornate and imposing building to the east of Central Park in Old Havana, is well behind schedule.

This luxury hotel, restored by the Cuban state in partnership with French construction group, Bouygues, was supposed to open in October, but chunks of the outer walls are missing.

Peering through the dust, the scene looks no different from any number of other hotels being built in Havana.

But take a closer look and some of the labourers are different. They work more hurriedly and speak different languages. Some wear turbans. That is because 150 of the men building the Manzana de Gomez are Indian.

For the first time, the Communist Party has permitted a multinational to directly hire foreign labour on a large scale.

Until now, overseas firms operating in Cuba have had to hire Cuban workers through state labour agencies. Companies pay Cuba in dollars, and Cuba pays workers in pesos, worth 25 times less. Severing the connection between employer and employee makes it impossible to institute any performance pay and yields low levels of productivity. The status quo in Cuban workplaces can be neatly summed up by the old Soviet joke: "We pretend to work; they pretend to pay us."

In March 2014, the Cuban government removed a major barrier to hiring foreign workers when it passed a new foreign investment law allowing different regulations concerning non-Cuban workers under "exceptional circumstances". 

In October 2015, Martin Bouygues, the chief executive of Bouygues and godfather of Nicolas Sarkozy's youngest son, flew to Havana for a special meeting with Raul Castro. This March, the new workers arrived.

The seismic shift has gone unreported by the island's state media but word has got out about it in Havana. Thanks to Christopher Columbus's hapless sense of direction, Cubans call the native peoples of the Americas "Indians". Cubans refer to the people of India by another and not altogether accurate label, "Hindus".

While the average Cuban earns $30 a month, Reuters has reported that the Indian workers are being paid more than $1,500. The island is a hardy redoubt of socialism, but as the spectre of capitalism haunts Cuba, is wage discrimination fuelling resentment among Cubans?

[PaulPower]

I am reading something similar about labors in Florida tomatoes fields... fascinating stuff


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