In Puerto Rico, a government job – which you got by being a member of the political party in power – where you don’t have to actually do any work, is called a batatita (batata being a sweet potato, batatita a small sweet potato).
Now it looks like the governor of Puerto Rico is aiming to cut back a lot of batatitas:
Puerto Rico slashes gov’t work force en masse
Puerto Rico fired nearly 8,000 government workers Friday, the start of a wave of layoffs aimed at closing a budget deficit as the island struggles through its third year of recession.
The first round included mostly temporary clerical workers in the education, treasury and health departments. Gov. Luis Fortuno has said he needs to cut 30,000 public sector jobs on an island where more than one-fifth of the people work for the local government.
The layoffs come as Puerto Rico faces an unemployment rate of nearly 15 percent, higher than anywhere on the U.S. mainland. Many fear the new job losses will ripple through the economy in the form of unpaid mortgages and failing businesses.
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The layoffs were immediate for 4,000 workers, while the remaining will be dismissed by early July, according to Carlos Garcia, president of the island’s Government Development Bank for Puerto Rico.
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Those affected will receive health insurance coverage for up to six months. They also can choose to receive $5,000 to go back to school or start a new business, or $2,500 for relocation costs, among other offers.Fortuno announced the cuts in March, saying they would save about $2 billion a year and will affect about 14 percent of the public work force. Police officers and teachers are exempt.
“The problem is that we cannot afford to pay these people,” he said. “This is a difficult process, but the alternative was to increase sales tax, income taxes and other measures that would have affected even more people.”
About 2,500 government workers already have agreed to voluntary buyouts, which translates into $51.2 million in savings, according to the government.
Fortuno declared a fiscal emergency shortly after taking office in January.
He said the cuts are needed despite the government’s injection of $500 million into the economy earlier this year. Fortuno also has promised to reduce his $70,000 annual salary by 10 percent and that of his Cabinet officials by 5 percent over the next two years.
Puerto Rico has a bloated and well-established bureaucracy, which for decades has encumbered the economy.
Does this mean the end of the batatita? Probably not, but it’s a good start.
Call me a cynic, but how many of these job cuts are the batatita, and how many are the folk who actually do the work? Because where I live, the second category generally get cut before the first …
Thank you, Fausta, for a very interesting post. I had no idea that Puerto Rico’s government suffers from what sounds like the same “political patronage” problem we have had, and still have, in Chicago.
As I am always in search of areas of common interest between diverse cultures, countries, and societies, I guess I’m pleased that we share this one! Of course, it will be better when we share clean, honest governments instead.
In pre-Castro Cuba, what you describe being the batatita was called “una botella.” why this name, I do not know. It ended however, abruptly, when Castro seized power and teh government.
Is there a lesson to be learned from this? Given the present government of the U.S., no.
Why not. Ineptitude and incompetence rule the day.
As we progess into the shadow of a real dictatorship under Obama, this may change.
Here in Panama we have a beautiful flower that only blooms for a couple of hours in the bright sunshine in the morning. Then the blossoms close. I asked my friend who runs a garden center what was the name of the flower. Her reply was they are called government employee flower…they will open up for a few hours in the morning and then shut down for the rest of the day.
You know very well what’s going to happen with a lot of those workers that will be laid off.
They will most likely end up… here, in the Mainland. To compete for jobs with the rest of the unemployed here.
Decades of fiscal irresponsibility are not going to be erased overnight. Even el Gobernador Fortuño understands that.