Why Isn’t Cuba Held to the Same Moral Standard as McDonald’s?

Why Isn't Cuba Held to the Same Moral Standard as McDonald's?

Castro Once Promised Workers 30% Share of Profits, Now Pays Doctors 7%

Posted by Victoria L. Henderson on September 18, 2013 at 8:52 am



The Huffington Post recently ran a story that took aim at McDonald's for

paying just 17 per cent of its revenue to employees in wages and

benefits. The article, which suggested that doubling worker pay at

McDonald's would add just 68 cents to the cost of a Big Mac, quickly

circulated through the blogosphere, with critics framing the

revenue-to-wage ratio as a clear example of corporate greed.

As it turns out, the story, written by a University of Kansas

undergraduate student, was misleading since it excluded McDonald's

franchise stores, which employ the vast majority of McDonald's

employees. On average, fast food franchises pay about 30 to 35 per cent

of revenue in labor costs.

Given the outrage prompted by the initial story, however, it is worth

considering revenue-to-wage ratios in the socialist camp.

Andrés Oppenheimer reports that Cuba's Marxist-Leninist regime receives

the equivalent of USD $4,080 monthly from public coffers in Brasilia for

each Cuban doctor serving in Brazil's controversial Mais Medicos (More

Doctors) program.

The Cuban government does not disclose how much of the revenue from its

lucrative medical internationalism program goes to the doctors

themselves. However, based on the testimony of Cuban doctors who have

defected while working internationally the pay is estimated to average

between USD $250 and $300 monthly, or about 7 per cent of the total Cuba

receives from Brazil under the Mais Medicos program – a far cry from the

30 per cent share of profits that Fidel Castro proposed in his

"revolutionary laws" of 1953.

While Cuban doctors serving internationally may receive only a fraction

of the revenue generated by their labor, the remuneration is more than

what they would receive in Cuba, where doctors often earn less than taxi

drivers, who have access to foreign currency in the tourism industry.

The rapid expansion of the medical internationalism program, which now

outstrips tourism as Cuba's greatest source of revenue, has led to

concerns over increased wait times and decreased quality of care in

Cuba, reflecting the stagnation that occurs in planned economies, where

markets cannot self-adjust to changes in supply and demand.

Polls show the vast majority of Brazilians support Mais Medicos. But the

no-bid contract for the program, which was brokered by the Pan American

Health Organization, is under scrutiny for possible violation of

domestic and international labor codes. According to the National

Federation of Brazilian Physicians, the Cuban doctors amount to slave

labor. The Federation, itself a special interest lobby, has organized

protests against the program, including shaming campaigns against the

Cuban doctors.

Other critics of the program have ruffled feathers for arguing that

Brazil is conspiring with a dictatorship. In his recent address to the

Brazilian Congress, Carlos Rafael Jorge Jiménez, a Cuban doctor now

living in Brazil who was expected to testify in support of Mais Medicos,

harshly criticized the program, demanding to know why the Cuban doctors

are not paid directly and why they cannot enter and leave Brazil at

will, or apply for political asylum.

At the end of the day, Cuba's medical internationalism program should be

seen as a litmus test for the depth of "progressive" concern over both

the revenue-to-wage ratio and labor issues more broadly.

If activists are correct to target the maquila industry in Mexico (as

elsewhere) for paying double the minimum wage, for example, one wonders

why these same activists have not raised concerns about the Mais Medicos

program, under which Cuban doctors receive less than the mandated

minimum wage of Brazil.

Similarly, if a fictitious 17 per cent revenue-to-wage ratio was deemed

scandalous for McDonald's, where is the outcry over a 7 per cent

revenue-to-wage ratio for Cuban doctors?



About Victoria L. Henderson

A former journalist and magazine editor, Henderson is a PhD Candidate

(ABD) at Queen's University and a managing director at the Institute for

Social and Economic Analysis in Ontario, Canada. She holds degrees in

Spanish & Latin American Studies and Geography. Follow @iseacanada.



Source: "Why Isn't Cuba Held to the Same Moral Standard as McDonald's?"

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http://blog.panampost.com/victoria-henderson/2013/09/18/why-isnt-cuba-held-to-the-same-moral-standard-as-mcdonalds/