(The following article is from the August 1-31, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

A Cuban News Agency article on July 11 reported on President Raul Castro's recent speeches to the country's Parliament, stressing that "with the joint and conscious effort of all the people, Cuba will produce the necessary food and will preserve the main achievements of the Revolution, while it will continue to advance without disregarding its defense one single minute."

     Raul Castro said that the new draft bill on Social Security, raising the retirement age by five years, reflects the realities of rising life expectancy and birthrate levels which have remained low for several decades. He noted that Cuba's demographic situation has changed since May 1963, when the Revolution guaranteed social security for all workers and their families. Over 238,000 youths reached working age in 1980, while last year that figure was 166,000, projected to decline further to 129,000 by the year 2020. By 2025, 25% of Cuba's population, more than anywhere else in Latin America, will be over 60 years old, and there will be 770,000 fewer people in the working age population.

     Noting that 13.8% of the Cuban budget now goes towards social security and assistance, Raul said today it is necessary to extend the working age. There may also be changes in part-time work, to allow Cubans to hold more than one labour contract and receive the corresponding salaries.

     The draft bill legislating these changes will go through extensive public consultations before being finalized and submitted to the next session of the Cuban parliament by the end of 2008. The new system will be gradually implemented over the next seven years to protect workers arriving at their expected retirement age under current legislation.

     Raul Castro also called on teachers and professors who are no longer working to return to their profession. Before the upcoming school year, the parliament will allow teachers to return to their jobs at full salary, without affecting their retirement pensions.

     The Cuban President spoke about the need for workers to feel themselves as owners of the means of production, without depending solely on theoretical explanations. Workers' incomes must match their output and their workplace's fulfilment of its social purpose and the reason for its creation, he said, in order to improve productivity and provide services.

     On another issue, Raul Castro said that "Cuba has to reverse, once and for all, the trend of the decreasing cultivated land area, which between 1998 and 2007 was reduced by 33 percent, a fact that greatly influenced the limitations imposed by the economic crisis."     "In other words," he added, "we have to go back to the land! We have to make it produce!"

     In the future, Raul said, legal regulations will be approved to start giving idle land to those capable of making it produce immediately, among other measures to increase food production.