[ReggieRed]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...rpc=22&sp=true

Cuban state layoffs move slowly, workers uneasy

(Reuters) - Cuba's program to slash 500,000 state jobs nationwide has barely gotten off the ground in the provinces, as officials scramble to provide alternatives and deal with unease and anger over the layoffs.

Confusion about how to implement the cuts, a lack of alternative jobs and worker resistance have led President Raul Castro to drop a deadline to carry out the plan by March.

The layoffs, aimed at cutting expenditures by the debt-ridden government and increasing productivity on the Caribbean's biggest island, are a key part of economic reforms Castro says are critical to the survival of Cuban communism.

Some 3,000 jobs have been cut in eastern Granma province since the program started in October, a similar number in adjacent Santiago de Cuba and 1,000 in central Camaguey, local officials told Reuters last week.

But that is just 10 percent of the 70,000 jobs they said were slated to go by March in the three provinces and already the experience has proved wrenching for a society where a secure job had been guaranteed for decades under a centrally run socialist economy.

"We never know now if tomorrow we will wake up with a job or not and it was never like that before," said a middle-aged woman in Santiago de Cuba, asking that her name not be used.

A companion reform measure lifting many curbs on operating small private businesses and working privately in skilled trades was originally designed to absorb the workers who have yet to be let go.

As of January 31, 113,000 people nationwide had taken out licenses to work on their own, including 15,000 in the Camaguey, Granma and Santiago provinces.