Cuba will eliminate more than half a million state jobs over the next six months as part of a push to raise productivity in the communist-ruled island, the country's main labour organisation says.
Workers laid off from government jobs will no longer be sent home with partial pay, but will have to find other means to make a living, the Cuban Worker's Central, or CTC by its Spanish acronym, said on Monday.
"Our state neither can nor should continue maintaining companies... with inflated payrolls, and losses that are a drag on the economy, are counterproductive, generate bad habits and deform worker's performance," it said.
It said more than 500,000 public sector jobs will be eliminated by March 2011.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro last week caused a stir when it was reported he told a US journalist, "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us any more."
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Castro, 84, later confirmed he made the remark, but was amused to see it had been taken literally and said that he meant "exactly the opposite."
Castro's brother Raul, who is now the president, said a year ago that the government wanted to relocate more than a million state employees. Cuba has a workforce of 4.9 million people in a country with 11.2 million population. The state controls 95 per cent of the economy.
For years, the government has given laid off workers up to 60 per cent of their salary while they were waiting to be placed in a new job.
But the CTC said "it will no longer be possible to indefinitely protect or subsidise workers income."
