A teacher, a journalist, a circus trainer and a general practitioner will receive the same salary in Cuba, according to the salary reform that the government is implementing on January 1.
A comprehensive economic reform will raise the minimum wage five times to 2,100 Cuban pesos ($ 87) and include a pronounced price increase to accompany the unification of the two currencies from 2021, a unique system that has ruled Cuba for 26 years.
The measure establishes 32 salary scales based on the type of work or occupation, and sets an income ceiling of 9,510 Cuban pesos ($ 396).
In the 77 pages of Ministry of Labor resolutions published in the Official Gazette, the salaries that will receive President Miguel Díaz-Canel and the first secretary of the ruling Communist Party (PCC, the only one), Raúl Castro, are not specified.
Nor are details of the salaries that members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and the Ministry of the Interior will receive, which have never been made public on the island.
But one of the highest paid governors are the country’s governors who will take in their wallets about 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 bastion of the revolution, a general practitioner will receive a salary of 5,060 Cuban pesos ($ 210), comparable to that of a journalist, a schoolteacher or a circus trainer. A vice consul earns $ 20 more.
In the case of athletes, many of them prominent figures, they will have a base salary based on their results. For example, an Olympic medalist receives 5,590 Cuban pesos ($ 232) and a world medalist receives 4,845 ($ 203). A member of the baseball ‘Team Cuba’ earns 3725 pesos ($ 155) per month.
47.65% of the more than three million Cubans who work for the state will have “an income well below the estimated average salary of 3,838 Cuban pesos ($ 159),” Cuban economist Pedro Monreal said on Twitter.
The authorities have indicated that the reform aims to stimulate integration into employment, the promotion of management positions and to solve the problem of the inverted salary pyramid in one go, i.e. those who hold professions or functions with a higher degree earn more from complexity.