Abstract
Based on a qualitative study, this chapter proposes a reading of the configuration and reconfiguration processes experienced by domestic workers and paid domestic work in the informal space after the labor restructuring process who has been implementing since 2008 in Cuba. There are problems associated with this type of work, which reappear and worsen in the current context and could be pointing to possible setbacks in terms of social equity and gender. In this sense, it is interesting to understand how these women have reached this situation, what and how their labor trajectories have been, how social inequalities in this sector are (re)configured within the current context, which persist in relation to previous periods and what factors have contributed to reproduce them over time.
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Notes
- 1.
One of the negative consequences of this procedure was the fall in productivity between 2008 and 2010, years in which, although indicators related to economic growth continue to grow, they do so at much slower rates: GDP at a rate of 2.5% per year, employment at 1.3% and productivity at 1.2% (García, Anaya, & Piñeiro, 2011, p. 7 cited by Echevarría, 2013, p. 137).
- 2.
In Cuba, there is a dual monetary circulation. On one hand, there is the Cuban peso and, on the other, the Cuban convertible peso (a currency similar to the US dollar, although it has been taxed at an additional 10% since November 15, 2004). The Cuban peso is devalued with respect to the Cuban convertible peso at a ratio of 1 to 24.
- 3.
It is worth noting that this situation was much more advantageous in the first decade of the twenty-first century, when experts seemed to agree that Cuba enjoyed a certain “demographic bonus” (since the dependency rates of the inactive with respect to those that do work are particularly low). Although these circumstances have not changed completely, a deterioration in this relationship has been observed, based on the effect of an aging population and, indirectly, on external migration, which usually comprise mostly people of working age (Martin, 2015, p. 87).
- 4.
The author lists the following documents as the synthesis of the axes that make up the new moment of reform: Speeches delivered by Raúl Castro on July 26, 2007, on February 24, 2008, and at the close of the sixth plenary session of the PCC in 2011, PCC 2011, “Guidelines of the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution and PCC 2011” Base Document. First National Conference.
- 5.
In Cuba, the employment policy since 1959 was to guarantee employment as a guiding principle; this was later translated into the concept of full employment (with the State in the role of the creator of the main sources of work). In these circumstances, maintaining unemployment and inactivity at minimum levels are expected results. As a result, for more than 50 years, the State generated the main job offers and thereby effectively regulated the labor market. This, together with numerous policies aimed at increasing the participation in the public sphere of vulnerable groups such as women, led to a continuous growth in their participation as employees until the 1990s. However, in the new context these programs have tended to disappear, and from the legal point of view, the General Labor Relations Regulations that established, among other issues, the principles of the country’s employment policy have been repealed and replaced by the Regulations of the Labor Code (ANPP, 2014). This regulation, compared to the preceding one, has a higher hierarchical position because it is a decree-law while the previous one is a resolution, and unlike the other, it does not state principles of employment policy; issues related to this principle are addressed more generally (Echevarría et al., 2015).
- 6.
Among the aspects that distinguish this mode of production from the pre-industrial or industrial appear the following: it has a close relationship with the system of patriarchal domination (Delphi, 1982), its prevailing rationality is not always economic/utilitarian (Lautier, 2003, p. 808), and in the labor relations that are established, the family and everyday life can play a definitive role (Benston, 1977; Kofes, 2001).
- 7.
They are areas of action of the objects, means and workforce that are differentiated from each other by the particular way in which they are configured, by a set of internal links: the predominant type of property, the degree of commitment to planning or with the market as a mechanism of regulation, the forms of management and mechanisms and/or prerogatives of the prevailing administration and the working conditions and relationships that exist within it (Campos, 2003).
- 8.
Taking into account the current exchange rate, their income in Cuban pesos would be between 384 CUP and 4800 CUP.
- 9.
This condition continued to grow steadily until the 1990s when it declined, then it recovered and continued to grow (Romero, 2010).
- 10.
Conciliatory strategies include (Romero, 2009, p. 30): (a) the creation of new day cares and Kindergartens; (b) an increase in the number of scholarships for students, in high school, pre-university and higher; (c) the inauguration of camps and Palaces of Pioneers; (d) improvements to vacation plans; (e) an increase in the supply of household electrical appliances that alleviate work at home; (f) the creation of workers’ and students’ canteens, so that women did not have to return to their homes at lunchtime; (g) the establishment of Care Centers for the Elderly (Homes); (h) the establishment of the “Plan Jaba,” a mechanism established to shorten the time of workers queuing for food purchases; (i) the construction of washing machines or dry cleaners; (j) a National Program of Assistance to the elderly and disabled people; (k) a social work program with single mothers who have children with severe disabilities; (l) Maternity Leave for Working Women (1974); (m) paid leave to accompany family members and relatives to medical appointments; (n) Education-Health-FMC (Cuban Women’s Federation) Joint Resolution and the creation of children’s houses in UBPC (basic units of production), CPA (cooperatives), in sugar mills and in fishing companies; (o) open, flexible schedules in some centers; (p) flexibility in the selection of vacations and special attention given to women with small children so they could leave during weeks of school recess and holiday periods and (q) increase of telecommuting after the appearance and access of workers to new information and telecommunications technologies, which allows spatial flexibility to execute work, among other things.
- 11.
Despite the precarious conditions which contributed to the legitimacy given to this discourse, this job does not constitute a manifestation of slave labor per se, nor of a particular sociopolitical system. Even though it is almost always carried out in conditions of servitude (“this is one of the occupations where the deficit of decent work is greater and situations close to slavery still take place”) (De Souza, 2010, p. 35), it has as a starting point an unequal relationship (economic, racial, territorial, gender, generational, etc.), the labor exploitation to which the workers of this sector are subject is sharpened by capitalism and has the peculiarity of being carried out in the private home of the person who contracts the services, which implies limitations to be controlled and inspected; domestic work is a work activity like others, in which a person sells his or her labor in exchange for remuneration in cash and/or in kind. This can be done in conditions of freedom, security and human dignity, that is, it can become a decent job.
- 12.
Given this situation, access to these care services is prioritized for the children of women who have a formal employment relationship (preferably with State institutions) or care-dependent elderly people who do not have any relatives to care for them. While the arguments established to give priority to some cases over others are understandable, these can become counterproductive factors to the intended reality of equity: first, because mothers who do not have formal employment cannot request this service and therefore they cannot be incorporated and because they cannot be incorporated, they cannot request it; so they are inserted in a vicious circle from which they cannot leave; second, because the policy is designed to give the responsibility of care to the family, since only in cases in which this institution cannot assume this responsibility does it take care of the well-being those who are in situations of dependency.
- 13.
The average number of years out of the labor market among those who left temporarily to care for close relatives was 13 years.
- 14.
Data from the National Institute of Economic Research (INIE) and the State Committee for Labor and Social Security show that in 1990 more than a quarter of the total population and more than a fifth of nuclear families had low incomes (up to 50 pesos) (Zabala, 2010, p. 83).
- 15.
In this space there are more opportunities to find part-time or hourly jobs, even if they do not require their presence every day of the week.
- 16.
Approval of this activity as a possible alternative within self-employment with Decree 141/93.
- 17.
Mainly self-employed people who earned money by renting rooms to tourists or owners of paladares (private restaurants), people who received remittances from abroad or worked in the tourism sector, joint ventures or other companies that had this type of stimulation, among others.
- 18.
This fact can have a close relationship with the levels of instruction attained.
- 19.
A sign of the invisibility of power relations on which these relationships are based, which are often masked in the perception of familiarity that emerges from daily interaction and sharing of privacy.
- 20.
It should be noted that although some specialists consider that conciliation policies are family policies of the third generation (Brullet, 2000, and Escobedo, 2000, in Torns, 2005, p. 20), the truth is that they were drafted essentially to promote female employment, rather than the transformation of family dynamics. They are almost always designed based on a patriarchal logic where the public world, paid work and production matter are the most important (Romero, 2014).
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Romero Almodovar, M. (2019). The Restructuring of Labor in Cuba (2008–2016) and Paid Domestic Workers: Broken or Reconstructed Labor Trajectories?. In: Rausky, M., Chaves, M. (eds) Living and Working in Poverty in Latin America. Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00901-4_7
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