Cuban Workers, Strikes & the Socialist State

Cuban Workers, Strikes & the Socialist State
September 13, 2013
Workers do not strike in Cuba – or so it seems
Rogelio Manuel Diaz Moreno

HAVANA TIMES — In the years immediately following the triumph of the
Cuban Revolution (in January 1959), the island's trade union leadership
undertook to do away with the strike as a mechanism for asserting worker
demands.

The Cuban Workers' Federation (CTC) was absorbed by the State apparatus,
regulated by the government and controlled by the single-party system
which came into being at the time. The government assumed the commitment
of brining economic and social progress to the country.

The CTC did its part, and did it well. Though it is true the
revolutionary government helped the majority of the population living in
abject poverty, putting behind their deplorable living conditions, it is
also true that it lost its direction somewhere down the road. This, at
least, is the view expressed by Raul Castro, who went as far as saying
the country had been taken to the edge of a precipice.

Thus, we have arrived at a situation in which working people do not
receive enough, in wages, to be able to get by. That is another
statement made by Cuba's president. Lacking an institution that can
organize and represent them, Cuban workers have no means of making any
kind of labor-related demands.

They look on the CTC as a mere appendage of their company's management
and of State institutions. Union meetings, for them, are basically an
occasion to express support for government and Party directives, calling
for more work, less earnings, accepting a lay-off without protesting, etc.

Defending worker rights or calls for public protests, which earn one the
reputation of being a troublemaker and pave the road to unemployment,
is, of course, out of the question. The State / government is free to do
whatever it pleases.

¿Or is there another side to this?

All societies have a rebellious lot. Cuban construction workers may not
have approached the CTC to express their grievances, but they did, at
one point, stage a de facto strike. In the 1990s, Cuba's construction
companies were practically left without employees. The State had no
choice but to substantially improve wages, accommodations for employees,
food, and other conditions, in order to repopulate the industry with
part of the lost labor force.

A similar situation arose in connection with another difficult job, that
of maintaining public order. The government had to re-locate police
officers from the eastern provinces to Havana en masse, as nearly no one
in the capital was willing to do such a thankless job for the low wages
the State was offering. Once again, the State, faced with an inexorable
need, had to give in and began paying police officers more decorous
salaries.

State farms in Cuba's countryside also witnessed an exodus of workers.
Here, the State didn't respond by raising salaries but by distributing
idle lands to those willing to make an honest living with the sweat of
their brows. In the long run, workers again had their way.

Of course, these aren't "strikes" in the strictly theoretical or
academic sense of the word. The loss of teachers, qualified health
specialists and high-performance athletes, who either change professions
or countries, also does not fit nicely into the Marxist paradigm of
proletarian struggle. The theft of goods, raw materials, fuels and other
products from any workplace that isn't rigorously monitored fits this
paradigm even less.

When those at the bottom perceive that the strongest and less scrupulous
of the lot are the ones who come out on top, they do what they can, even
if it's not in the textbook and isn't exactly heroic. The dominant
class, at the top, tightens the screws in response, and the result is a
kind of arm wrestling match where the one who can hold out the longest wins.

The Party bureaucracy and its servile underlings still find it hard to
accept that working people have rights and value. They squeeze as much
as they can out of them in every sphere. They try different strategies
to ride out the storm or confuse their opponents, depending on the
sector: they mobilize workers through the Food Program, launch intensive
teacher training courses, re-locate construction workers, police
officers and teachers to other regions and tolerate or encourage the
broadcasting of alienating and superficial videos through the mass media.

Unfavorable productivity rates are hidden behind a thick curtain of
demagogy and flattering figures are extolled without limits. All the
while, workers are required to show their unconditional support for the
government if they have any hopes of getting ahead, working abroad or
earning a very limited bonus.

A string of tiresome political campaigns – as oppressively dense as they
can be thrown together – are used so as to drain people of the energy or
will to think about changing the (dysfunctional) way in which things
work in the country.

At certain points in time, more material incentives are made available
in given jobs and, when a more or less precarious stability is achieved,
they are taken away. Where none of this can be put into practice, or
where it fails beyond any hope of recovering the sector, or where the
government cannot afford to lose the profits to be gained there, they
liberalize the sector and make concessions to foreign capital.

The CTC is the most conspicuously absent organization throughout these
processes. So much so, that it is evident that Cuba suffers from a
degeneration of supposedly grassroots organizations, those which ought
to organize and defend the workers.

A responsible and courageous attitude on behalf of the CTC's
representatives and members, and an attitude of respect from the State,
would be a means of channeling tensions and difficulties and of working
towards a consensus around the solutions ultimately imposed on us by
reality.

This would pave the way towards a possible raise in worker salaries and
the implementation of measures and plans aimed at increasing production,
improving services, taking better care of the environment, satisfying
community needs and other improvements.

One is more likely to see an apple tree sprout oranges than a privileged
class give up its benefits willingly. We probably won't be able to avoid
an intermediate stage of chaos in which the country's productive
structures and services infrastructure are worn down, when hard facts
will force many to change their way of thinking.

Those who have stifled, or stood by as others have stifled the ability
of Cuban workers to self-manage and organize, bear a heavy burden of
responsibility for the incalculable damage to the nation and the people
this has brought upon us.

I say this so as not to come off as too much of a radical, and affirm
that, since we aspire to build a socialist system, where the means of
production are controlled by the workers, what we simply need to do is
do away with the country's bureaucracy in one fell swoop and let the
workers manage their workplaces, and the country, as they see fit.

Source: "Cuban Workers, Strikes & the Socialist State" -
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=98765