Workers Day
Ray Sanchez | Direct from Havana
1:11 PM EDT, May 1, 2008
Havana
Hundreds of thousands of Cubans marched through Revolution Plaza for May
Day festivities Thursday, many hoping the island's new leadership would
use the occasion to announce additional measures to improve their daily
lives.
Raul Castro, marking his first May Day appearance as Cuba's new
president, smiled and waved from a parade stand high above the vast
square but did not address the sea of flag-waving, red-shirted marchers.
Instead, Salvador Valdes Mesa, secretary-general of communist Cuba's
powerful labor union, appealed for more efficiency and productivity as a
way of improving the economy and advancing the work of ailing
revolutionary Fidel Castro.
"We Cubans have important challenges before us," Valdes said, adding
that workers needed to tackle "inefficiencies and weaknesses" in the
workplace.
The labor leader said there had been "modest advances" in production and
services, but that Cuba must "reduce costs and achieve the economic
efficiency we need."
"It is fundamental to concentrate efforts on increasing production and
productivity, above all of food," Valdes told the crowd.
The event marked the second straight year and only the fourth time in
nearly five decades that Fidel Castro, 81, had missed May Day since the
1959 revolution. The elder Castro has not been seen in public since
undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006.
Half a million Cubans had been called to the plaza, where Fidel Castro
used to deliver hours-long speeches before flag-waving throngs.
"We are witnessing a turning point in the Cuban revolution, a time of
change that will ensure the continuation of Cuban socialism," said
marcher Laura Rodriguez, a teacher. "That is why all these people are here."
Many workers had hoped that Cuba's first new leadership in decades would
unveil new reforms on Thursday.
Since officially succeeding his brother Fidel in late February, Raul
Castro has lifted restrictions for ordinary Cubans on cell phones,
computers and other consumer electronics. An unofficial ban that kept
Cubans from renting cars or staying at tourist hotels also was lifted.
Agricultural reforms were recently announced as well as increases in
government pensions and salary hikes for court employees.
The average salary for state workers is about $20, though health care,
education and housing are free and basic food is subsidized.
In a country where most workers are employed by the state, economists
estimate that an average family of four needs nearly twice the current
average income to cover basic needs.
In 2007, a study by the Communist Youth League found that more than
282,000 young people in Cuba neither work nor study. In Havana, 20
percent of the working age population is unemployed.
Hours before Thursday's festivities, more than a dozen electrical
workers carrying drums and bottles of booze marched through the narrow
streets of Old Havana, working their way to Revolution Plaza.
One man, in his late 30s, speculated that Raul could take the day
honoring the world's workers to announce measures to bring the
convertible peso, a hard currency used mostly by tourists and other
foreigners, in line with the weaker peso used by ordinary Cubans. A
younger man next to him laughed, encouraging the wishful worker to have
another gulp of Havana Club rum.
Still another worker said Castro could formally announce the elimination
of the tarjeta blanca – the "white card," the state exit permit that
allows Cubans to travel abroad. This caused more laughter.
"This is Cuba," said Ernesto, a 48-year-old welder who asked that his
full name not be used because he was a state employee. "When the
government wants you to know, they'll tell you. Until then, don't think
about it."
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-havanadaily0501,0,6235347.column
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