Cuba’s Trade Unions - What Are They Good For?

Cuba's Trade Unions: What Are They Good For?

February 27, 2014

Fernando Ravsberg*



HAVANA TIMES — "Unions aren't here to hand out hotel coupons as work

incentives. We're here to ensure we are paid decorous salaries and that

our workers can go on vacation using their salaries, without having

anyone give them these vacations as a gift," a trade union delegate said

the first day of the Congress of the Cuban Workers Association



To say that protecting the rights and wages of workers is the central

role a trade union should play may strike some as stating the obvious.

According to Cuban journalist Yohan Gonzalez, however, people in Cuba

actually run the risk of forgetting "why and for what purpose the CTC

was created."



He adds that the workers federation fails "to represent and is cut off

from the base." At the locals, in fact, union leaders come to

understandings with "company management in favor of personal interests

and against the demands and needs of union members." (1).



The strategy reminds me of the good-cop-bad-cop routine. While the

management demands discipline and productivity, the union leadership

decides which of its members will earn the right to buy an electrical

appliance at subsidized prices or an inexpensive vacation at the beach.



The theoretical foundations of this trade union philosophy must be

sought in the tenets of "real socialism." After bringing all the means

of production under State control and declaring them "the people's

property", it would be a contradiction for the worker-owners to pressure

management for wage improvements.



In that ideal world also built in Cuba, trade union activity was

practically nullified. The Cuban Communist Party, which has a

representative in every State company and members at all managerial

positions around the country, is the one who defends the "strategic

interests" of the humble.



What's curious is that Karl Marx himself says that there are social

classes with particular interests under socialism. Thus, the

adulteration of unions left workers at a disadvantage, devoid of the

crucial instrument needed to defend their rights.



The social damage was even more serious than that, as this undermined

the counterweight that could have put a stop to bureaucratization. As

early as 1884, Jose Marti had warned about the difficulties the people

would encounter when it "confronted government officials united by

common interests." (2).



Despite the long history of Cuba's trade union movement, many workers

today do not feel represented by some of their leaders, which lack real

power or settle under the wings of managers in search of the crumbs the

bureaucracy is willing to give them.



The Challenge of Trade Unionism in Cuba



During the CTC congress, Cuban President Raul Castro announced that the

only wages that would go up are those of health professionals, and that

all other workers would have to wait for the country's productivity to rise.



He explained that a raise in salaries without an increase in

productivity leads to inflation. This may be true, but it is also true

that Cuba's economic inefficiency is not chiefly the fault of workers

but of those who manage companies and head ministries.



Working conditions could improve dramatically if the fuel, food,

vacation and trip expenses of management were rationalized, and if

superiors were dismissed and forced to pay for the damages they caused,

out of their own pockets, whenever they did anything stupid.



We are talking about a country where high transportation officials have

the fuel and spare parts they need to keep their own, private and

official cars rolling, while hundreds of buses idle in workshops for

lack of spare parts.



The State spends truckloads of money to buy cutting-edge medical

equipment to then let them collect dust at customs, because the

hospitals that need them simply don't send anyone to pick them up,

denying cancer patients the treatment they need.



The election of Ulises Guilarte as the new chair of the CTC may herald

changes. A young, pragmatic official, Guilarte enjoys the trust of the

Cuban president. He was the official tasked with setting in motion the

country's political and administrative decentralization, a sensible and

complex reform process.



The task ahead of him now is no less delicate – it goes beyond trade

union matters and points towards the need to re-establish a system of

counterweights that can balance society, empowering the productive

sectors before the budding managerial class.



Trade unions aren't only needed to check foreign investors and the

self-employed alone; they are also indispensable to contain the

appetites of government officials who, as Jose Marti warned (3), tend to

constitute an autocratic and abusive class.



1) http://desdeminsulacuba.com/2014/02/24/y-para-que-sirve-la-ctc/



2), 3). The Complete Works of Jose Marti, Volume XV, pg. 391, Ciencias

Sociales, Havana, 1991.

—–

(*) A Havana Times translation of the original published in Spanish by

BBC Mundo.



Source: Cuba's Trade Unions: What Are They Good For? - Havana Times.org

- http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=102111