U.S. wants lower labor costs for itself, but insists on higher salaries for Cuba
In 1971, when Baby Doc Duvalier became president of Haiti, it was possible to hope that he would make some reforms in the area of labor rights. Not much later, Miami’s Diario Las Americas published an article citing the expectations of one of the U.S. businessmen then operating in the island. He said:
We are here because there are no rules concerning labor; or, if there are any, they are ignored. If Baby Doc changes that, we will just go to some other country.
The 70s were times of expansion for the maquiladoras, plants built abroad to assemble goods made in USA with labor costs much below what they were for US workers. Cheap labor was the incentive for moving to Mexico and to Asian countries such as India, Pakistan, and Malaysia. China was beginning to deploy its Special Economic Areas; before long, it would become the World’s Factory. Its labor force was both cheap and plentiful.
Ronald Reagan’s accession to the White House announced the official disdain of labor unions in favor of corporations. Union membership in 1983 was at 20.1 percent of employees; by 2014 it was down to 11.1 percent. These days, profits rise higher and higher, but last year the Pew Foundation found that:
For most U.S. workers, real wages – that is, after inflation is taken into account – have been flat or even falling for decades, regardless of whether the economy has been adding or subtracting jobs.
During the entire time mentioned above, the U.S. has been especially concerned about the income of workers – as long as they are in Cuba. Simultaneously, the U.S. has done everything possible to strangle the Cuban economy.
The fall of the Soviet bloc devastated Cuba’s production capacity – Yeltsin withheld oil shipments and Cuba lost most of its trading counterparts. That was not enough, so the U.S. followed up with the Torricelli and Helms-Burton laws dedicated to making the economy collapse. Publicly, it still expected Cuba to raise the salaries of its workers.
The U.S. narrative on Cuba makes it appear that people in every other nation of the continent – none of them under blockade – are happy to stay home, while Cubans “flee” to the U.S. In reality, a constant stream comes from the other countries, too, whether Mexican engineers or Jamaican nurses. None of them depend on an Adjustment Act to provide them with visas if they just show up here.
Puerto Ricans are leaving the homeland for the mainland in such numbers as to reduce substantially the island’s population, now 3.5 million compared to 4.9 on the mainland.
It’s somewhat different for baseball stars (not lesser players) and doctors.
The sole superpower can pay better than any other country in America. Baseball players from all around the Caribbean want to play here, in the majors, for lots of money. So do some Cuban players, but because of the blockade they can’t invest in Cuba nor build, for example, sports stores.
The U.S. invented a program to seduce Cuban doctors into abandoning Cuba’s brigades abroad, thus depriving other countries from needed medical services. Median salaries of doctors in the U.S., depending on the kind of work, range from $138,000 to $291,000. Cuba cannot match that; neither can other countries south of the border.
In sum: the U.S. wants lower labor costs for its businesses; it offshores factory work for that reason; by law it seeks to strangle the Cuban economy; it offers visas to Cubans just for showing up; it attempts to lure doctors away from Cuba with a special program; and it boasts that – who would have thought it? – Cubans continue to come to the U.S.
At the same time, the U.S. still expects Cuba to raise salaries on the island, as if the U.S. had nothing to do with Cuba’s income. And, while it helps to reduce union membership in the U.S., it demands more trade unions for Cuban workers.
All Cuban workers, unlike U.S. workers, receive free health care. Their children receive free education including college for free.
It doesn’t make sense.
(From the: La Alborada)
