Havana Cuba. – A few days before this May Day, the CXV Plenary Session of the National Council of the Central Workers of Cuba (CTC) took place. And, despite the efforts of the official newspaper Workers for providing appreciable coverage to the least unfavorable moments for Castroism in said plenary session, such as the accountability of the Ministry of the Armed Forces to the union movement – that farce that is repeated year after year – it was inevitable that the events would transcend the meeting. failures of official unionism, as well as the difficult conditions in which Cuban workers carry out their work.
It was reported that during 2023 a total of 765 state-owned companies failed to meet the planned levels of work productivity, while another 985 entities were not able to achieve the goals in terms of the production of goods or the provision of services to the population.
Serious problems came to light regarding the distribution of profits created in the production process. Some basic business units (BBUs) fulfilled their production plans and created profits. However, since they are subordinated to a company, and this company, unfortunately, suffered losses due to its poor administrative management, these UEBs could not distribute the profits created among their workers. This is a consequence of the bureaucratic and top-down Cuban business system, which discourages those who truly strive to create the country’s wealth.
On the other hand, the bankization ordered by the authorities was also highly criticized in the Plenary. The shortage of ATMs in several territories, together with the low availability of cash in many banking agencies, caused a large part of the workers to face problems in being able to collect their salaries.
At the end of February of this year, a total of 339 state companies reported losses in their financial statements, a situation that will inevitably have a negative impact on the income of their workers.
The growing trend towards workers’ disaffiliation from official unionism caused great alarm among CTC officials. This is a phenomenon that is particularly evident among workers in the non-state sector, whose 17.9% – calculated at more than half a million workers – belong to a union affiliated to the CTC.
However, and as also a sign of the apathy of state workers towards the official unions, other information that appeared in the same edition of Workers shows that 15,500 members of the Food and Fisheries Industry Union stopped belonging to the CTC in 2023.
But, the worst thing for the CTC officials was learning that among the Food and Fisheries workers there is the opinion that the CTC union assemblies are a waste of time, and that nothing is solved in these conclaves.
That is something that must have fallen like the classic “bucket of cold water” on the heads of Ulises Guilarte de Nacimiento, the boss of the CTC, and the rest of his henchmen. These figures have always insisted that these assemblies make possible the materialization of “participatory democracy,” which supposedly allows workers to take part in the government of the country.
If we take into account the average salary in the country, about 4,500 pesos, and the value of the dollar in the informal market (more or less 360 Cuban pesos), we obtain that an average state worker earns around 12 dollars a month. And a poor retiree must survive on just over four dollars a month.
Obviously, Cubans have nothing to celebrate this May Day. For them, instead of International Workers’ Day, it might as well be National Homelessness Day.
OPINION ARTICLE
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2024-05-03 17:53:18
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