A teacher, a journalist, a circus tamer and a resident doctor will have the same salary in Cuba, according to the salary reform that the government will implement on January 1.
A comprehensive economic reform will quintuple the minimum wage to 2,100 Cuban pesos ($ 87) and include a sharp price increase, to accompany the unification of its two currencies from 2021, a unique system that prevailed in Cuba for 26 years. .
The measure sets 32 salary scales according to the type of work or professional activity, and sets an income limit of 9,510 Cuban pesos ($ 396).
The 77 pages of resolutions of the Ministry of Labor published in the Official Gazette do not specify the salaries that President Miguel Díaz-Canel or the first secretary of the ruling Communist Party (PCC, sole), Raúl Castro, will receive. .
Details of the salaries of members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and the Ministry of the Interior, which have never been made public on the island, are also not provided.
But among the highest paid mentioned are country governors who will carry in their portfolio around 9,010 Cuban pesos ($ 375), $ 183 more than a computer engineer or $ 123 more than the economic director of a state-owned company .
In the Cuban Public Health System, the bulwark of the revolution, a resident doctor must receive a salary of 5,060 Cuban pesos ($ 210), similar to that of a journalist, a schoolteacher or a circus tamer. A vice consul will earn $ 20 more.
In the case of athletes, many of them prominent figures, will have a base salary according to their results. Thus, an Olympic medalist will receive 5,590 Cuban pesos ($ 232) and a world medalist 4,845 ($ 203). A member of the ‘Base Cuba’ baseball team will earn 3,725 pesos ($ 155) a month.
47.65% of the more than three million Cubans working for the state will have “incomes well below the estimated average salary of 3,838 Cuban pesos ($ 159),” Cuban economist Pedro Monreal said on Twitter .
The authorities have pointed out that the reform seeks to stimulate the incorporation into employment, the promotion of management positions and solve once and for all the problem of the inverted wage pyramid, ie that those with professions or positions with higher earn more. degree of complexity.