Take advantage of the talent
By José Alejandro Rodríguez
pepe@juventudrebelde.cu
A young professor at the University of Havana’s School of Economics engaged in a bold exercise in intellectual honesty when she wondered “why Cuba’s rising and sustained investment in education is reflected in a less dynamic, though positive, contribution from the skilled workforce to the country’s economic growth.”
Yordanka Cribeiro Díaz took six and a half years to answer that question and obtain a doctorate in Economic Sciences in 2012 with a thesis that identifies the conditions for an evident contradiction: the growing formation of a skilled workforce that sees its contribution to Cuba’s economic growth limited by various distortions and asymmetries in its environment.
Convinced that “to be a revolutionary means to confront the problems without considering the conveniences,” Yordanka told Juventud Rebelde that “the ambitious program of Cuban education needs to fortify its economic sustainability.”
To correct deviations
In her thesis, the academician maintains that, to sustain that decisive contribution to economic growth by professionals and technicians, it is necessary to correct twists that have formed in the processes of formation, assignment and utilization of skilled workers in the present conditions of Cuba’s economy, which is characterized by disarticulations among the productive environment, the job structure and the supply of graduates.
She contrasts the high qualifications of the labor force and a productive structure characterized by a weak participation by high- and medium-high technology, and an emphasis on service.
Yordanka maintains that the professional services for productive activity are depressed, and that the systems of higher, technical and postgraduate education reveal a loss of participation in the specialties. This has great impact on the gains in productivity, the creation of technology and new capital goods, the organization of production, and the substitution of imports.
All this becomes evident when those labor resources are assigned to productive structures that can neither assimilate them nor properly encourage them. In her opinion, that asymmetry generates a migration of the labor force to fields with lower requirements for qualification but higher levels of remuneration. For example, in 2010 only 9.8 percent of those employed in the national economy worked in the manufacturing industry, a key sector of technological progress, Yordanka’s thesis says.
I didn’t study to do this …
The second level of distortion is the mismatch between the level of qualification or profile of specialization and the job. The high levels of qualification of the unemployed population are remarkable. In 2009, the unemployed and underemployed had an average of 10.5 and 11.03 years of school education, respectively, figures higher than those in most countries in the region.
Another problem is the emigration of the skilled-labor force. According to the PNUD, in 2009, 59 percent of the Cuban émigrés older than 15, residing in the 30 member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (among them the U.S., Canada, most European countries, Japan and Australia) had a high level of education. Almost a quarter of them had gone to college.
Among those émigrés, there is a large number of engineers and professionals in the Exact and Natural sciences. Their loss means a loss of financial resources that are transferred, in the form of implicit subsidies, to the growth and development of other economies.
That bloodletting and the previously described factors imply for the country an investment in formation that is not totally refunded by increases in productivity and growth. They also increase the cost of replacing the migrating workers.
Weak incentives and technological innovation
According to Yordanka, other factors in the affair of skilled labor vs. economic growth are a retardation of the productive and technological infrastructure on global and entrepreneurial levels, a low investment in science and technology and a weakness in the systems of innovation.
The deterioration of the productive culture and the low productivity of labor that have accumulated over the years can be associated to the weaknesses of the system of incentives and penalties in the economic model, the deteriorated role of wages, the weak differentiation in wages, and other distortions in the Law of Socialist Distribution.
In view of such insufficiencies, Yordanka’s thesis recommends a coordination of public policies on education, production, science and technological innovation that could strengthen the impact of human capital on economic growth, with integral solutions for the formation, assignment and utilization of the skilled-labor force.
The Cuban economic model requires an urgent redesign in the assignment of qualification, so the formation of the labor force may be better matched to the needs of the territories and support the processes of local development.
There is a need to overcome the retardation of the productive and technological infrastructure, pushing the industrial apparatus toward activities that are heavily dependent on knowledge. And it will be vital to promote schemes for providing incentives to the production and export of service goods with greater value added and technological content.
Yordanka believes that wages must stimulate productivity. Within the framework of labor readjustment, the state sector must continue to be the main receptor of skilled labor, so we must design a policy that favors that purpose from three directions:
• to increase remuneration for a highly qualified segment linked to strategic objectives;
• to expand the wage differentiation in the state sector, with a greater emphasis on the complexity and results of the work, and giving priority to the labor force that is better qualified and harder to replace;
• to simplify labor mechanisms in the state sector and other forms of property. In this latter aspect, we mustn’t rule out the promotion of professional services in different activities aimed at the productive sector, through mechanisms of contracting, in an environment of greater competition.
The above implies generalizing the principle of rewards and punishments according to the results and quality of the work in the productive and service sectors. In sum, to regain the productivity of work and wages to create a synergy that promotes economic growth.
A few sustainable questions
Even though Dr. Yordanka Cribeiro recommends in her thesis to broaden and deepen research in a subject that’s so strategic for the economic development of Cuba, some questions are inevitable:
Q.: Do you think that the implementation of the Economic and Social Guidelines for the Party and Revolution summarizes the spirit and urgency of your research?
A.: Of course. Many of the changes I allude to deal with transformations in the economic model that are already being started and with others, important and decisive, that are still to be made in the entrepreneurial milieu. They are decentralizing measures that offer a greater role to the economic actors.
That is why my thesis is among the studies that were sent by the National Association of Economists and Accountants to the National Commission on the Implementation and Development of Guidelines.
Q.: Someone might argue that the difficult financial and liquidity situation in the country is an obstacle to untie the Gordian Knot represented by skilled workforce vs. economic growth. What would your answer be?
A.: We cannot advance with so much conformism. We must modify our environment, gradually but with viable articulation. We have reserves of productivity and the advantage of a skilled workforce. We cannot allow the technological patterns to stagnate. Investment cannot continue to be the Ugly Duckling of the economy. We have to weigh what we can achieve in that sense. We must begin gradually, in sectors with possibilities that spill over into other economic activities.
Q.: Any investigative obsession in your future?
A.: To work on an integral and systemic model of the demand for a skilled workforce, thus contributing to elevate the economic impact of this important social achievement by the Revolution.
Q.: To whom are you most indebted for your thesis?
A.: To my tutor, Dr. Vilma Hidalgo de los Santos, Dean of the University of Havana’s School of Economics, for her solid contributions and reasoning and, above all, an example of something that’s essential in her: persistence.
Q.: Your thesis reflects some painful truths. Do you fear some rejection?
A.: In all problems of an economic nature, one has to identify the root causes, troublesome and painful though they might be. To identify their genesis is essential to change. To be a revolutionary is to confront the problems without thinking in conveniences – or in the consequences that may befall you.
This article and photo were taken from the newspaper Juventud Rebelde for June 10, 2012.
