Wages and Housing

In Cuba recently, some laws have been passed that are promised to be the first steps toward reform in the wage and housing sectors of Cuba. First, the previous law in Cuba decreed that there will be salary cap for certain jobs. Many were unhappy with this law because those who did higher quality work were not necessarily earning than their counterparts who were not as productive. The new law allows for salaries to be assigned based on production, which many say will give people greater incentive to do better work in their respective fields. The new housing law that was passed is simply a formal recognition of something that has been going since the late 1980s. The law allows people who rented state-owned apartments and houses when they worked for the state to keep the houses even after leaving their positions. The people who decide to stay in the state-owned housing could even gain title and pass it down to their children and so on and so forth. According to Oscar Espinosa Chepe, a state-trained economist who is critical of the government, the new law "gets rid of that insecurity many people had and alleviates bureaucratic pressure." Both of these pushes toward reform are interesting when considering the type of egalitarian society the Cuban government has tried to implement over the past fifty years. Perhaps Raul Castro is not going to be the same as his brother. Raul has done away with laws that prohibited Cubans from owning cell phones in their own name, staying in tourist hotels, buying dvd players, computers, and kitchen appliances.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080411/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_reforms;_ylt=AngrIaccPYO8sGF7EnbhJIW3IxIF