Labour and Economic Reform in Cuba

Anamary M. Linares

Oscar F. Estrada

A changing political context The Cuban economy is unique in many regards; its exceptionality mainly lies in its persistence in building socialism within a largely neoliberal globalised world. The disintegration of the socialist bloc, which accounted for more than 80% of the country’s foreign trade, had a severe impact on Cuba. Since the crisis of the 1990s, provoked by internal structural distortions spurred by the collapse of European socialism, the Cuban economy has been constantly struggling. The nadir point of the crisis was reached in 1993 when GDP was nearly 35% lower than in 1989. Subsequent data showed a remarkable recovery in the performance of the main macroeconomic aggregates. However, the statistics of the last five years reveal an exhausted economic model.

David J.P. Espina

The combination of external factors (global crises, natural disasters, and the US economic blockade) with internal structural distortions, resulting from incomplete reforms initiated in the early 1990s, has produced an ailing economy. Some of the salient symptoms of the current situation include: unsustainable fiscal deficits as a percentage of GDP (amounting to 6.7% in 2008 and 4.8% in 2009); permanent deficits in the trade balance, and especially in the goods sector since exports of professional services help maintain some level of equilibrium; large-scale withholding of payments to foreign creditors and investors; and wages in the state-owned enterprises (SOEs) which are not acting as incentives to increase productivity.

Challenges for Minimum Wage Campaign in South Korea

Lee Changgeun

For the past decade, labour conditions in South Korea can be characterised by rapid increases in precarious work and low pay, both of which have contributed to widening inequality. As of March 2011, precarious workers accounted for 48.5 % of the total labour force (17 million) and low pay rate as the share of wage earners earning below two-thirds of median wages (ILO) was 28% (4.79 million), a jump from 23% in 2001. Not surprisingly, most low paid workers are precarious workers. Almost half of precarious workers are expected to fall into the low-pay trap. In 2011, on average, precarious workers were paid 52.8% less than regular workers. Wage decile ratios have also deteriorated. The D9/D1[1] ratio has grown from 4.81 in 2001 to 5.49 in 2011. It is, therefore, no surprise minimum wages have attracted so much attention in recent years in Korea.

From Financial Crisis to Stagnation: The Destruction of Shared Prosperity and the Role of Economics

Thomas I. Palley

Marshall McLuhan, the famed philosopher of media, wrote “We shape our tools and they in turn shape us”. His insight also applies to the economy which is shaped by economic policy derived from economic ideas, and it is the theme of my recent book which argues the global economic crisis is the product of flawed policies derived from flawed ideas.

 Broadly speaking, there exist three different perspectives on the crisis. Perspective 1 is the hard-core neoliberal position, which can be labelled the “government failure hypothesis”. In the U.S. it is identified with the Republican Party and the Chicago school of economics. Perspective 2 is the soft-core neoliberal position, which can be labelled the “market failure hypothesis”. It is identified with the Obama administration, half of the Democratic Party, and the MIT economics departments. In Europe it is identified with Third Way politics. Perspective 3 is the progressive position which can be labelled the “destruction of shared prosperity hypothesis”. It is identified with the other half of the Democratic Party and the labour movement, but it has no standing within major economics departments owing to their suppression of alternatives to orthodox theory.

The King and Us - Why Thailand’s lèse majesté law matters to unions and the world

Ian Graham (author)

Somyot Prueksakasemsuk

“Union rights are human rights.” That has been said loud and often. But it bears repeating. Labour rights are specialised extensions of the principles set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. “Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests,” the declaration insists. Nobody reading this column is likely to disagree (except, perhaps, with the “his”). Philosophically, core human rights such as freedom of association have always underpinned core labour rights.

We seldom hear the equation put the other way round: “Human rights are union rights”. And yet it is just as true. A place that disregards any of the basic human rights is a place that trade unions will find irksome.

Lack of Rain in the Rainforest

Nora Räthzel

From work or nature to work and nature: another kind of unionism

On a one-week tour organised by João Paulo Cândia Veiga from the University of São Paulo and Manoel Edivaldo Santos Matos from the Union of Rural workers (Sindicato dos Trabalhadores y Trabalhadoras Rurais de Santarém, STTR) in Pará, a region of the Brazilian Amazonas, we visited eight communities along the Rivers Arapiuns, Maró and Amazonas. These are small communities of between 90 and 300 people. They are of mixed indigenous and Portuguese origin, some groups defining themselves as indigenous. Traditionally, they lived from fishing, hunting, gathering fruit and planting manioc. But with the arrival of timber companies their lives have become unstable. In the eighties, but on a much larger scale in the nineties, timber companies entered more remote areas of the rainforests. Game, fruits and fibres on which people had lived began to decrease radically. In the middle of the nineties, supported and organised by the STTR, the communities living in the areas began a struggle for the ownership of the land they worked and lived on. They won this struggle but their battles have not ended. The timber companies remain, employing carrot and stick strategies to get at the wood: threatening activists on the one hand and promising to provide electricity and jobs on the other. The companies do not keep their promises, jobs are heavy and wages are low. But when survival is difficult, some people see no other choice than to work for them. Others are too concerned with the future of the forests to accept such an option, which creates tensions within communities.