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Ever since Raul Castro became Cuba’s President in February 2008, people—at home and abroad—have been waiting for changes that would improve living conditions on the island. But the changes have been slow coming and there are indications that when they do take place they might not be the ones hoped for.

For three days this week, the official Communist Party daily, Granma, has front-paged statements made in the 1970s and 80s by former President Fidel Castro. They are all variations on the same theme: too many people being employed to do too little, and low productivity as the bane of the economy. He also warned that at some point there would be more university graduates than openings in their fields and that students should view their degrees as an honor but not necessarily as a ticket to a professional career.

Castro’s statement printed last Tuesday focused on “inflated” payrolls. Inside the same newspaper was an article announcing that the Ministry of Agriculture would be cutting thousands of bureaucratic jobs. Twenty-six percent of their employees - 89,000 people - it said, were office workers resulting in an “excess of unproductive personnel.”

Cubans fear that similar layoffs will come in many other sectors of the economy and that Granma’s publication of Fidel Castro’s views—if dated—on the issue are rather like trying to put the “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” on what are bound to be unpopular if necessary measures taken by his younger brother Raul.

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