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(Free Labour World, february 1997)
US President Bill Clinton has suspended for a further six months, from February l,the right of US citizens to sue enterprises in Cuba which "traffic" in property confiscated from them during the Cuban revolution in 1959. This clause of the Helms-Burton law, adopted last March and aimed at internationalising the US embargo against Cuba, was unanimously condemned by the United States principal allies. At a meeting in Caracas last April, the ICFTU's regional organisation for the Americas, ORIT, categorically rejected this strengthening of US sanctions and last December the ICFTU Executive Board restated its opposition to the US embargo imposed since 1960 on Fidel Castro's regime.
According to the report of an ICFTU mission to Cuba, the first since the 1959 revolution and the establishment of a communist regime, "most members of the mission felt by the time they left Cuba that the embargo only serves to prolong the hardships suffered by the Cuban people and workers both economically and socially and by holding up much needed political reforms". "The US sanctions are used by the authorities to reinforce unity around the ruling party" notes the report.
Just as ICFTU affiliates are unanimous in their criticism of the effects of the US embargo, they are equally united in their condemnation of the violations of human and trade union rights on the island. Two weeks after the return of the ICFTU mission, several dissidents they had met openly were arrested and sent to join the 400 or so political prisoners, according to Amnesty International, still locked in Castro's prisons. Faced with severe restrictions on their activities, the independent trade unions must often limit their action to denouncing trade union rights violations, and are not really able to organise the workers.
It is this anti-union repression and the failure of the official
trade union, the CTC, to abandon its role as a transmission belt
for the government that are worrying the ICFTU at a time when,
thanks to the opening up of the economy, many multinationals have
set their sights on Havana in the search for cheap labour. Despite
the US embargo - widely ignored, notes the ICFTU report - the
number of foreign-owned enterprises has increased from 200 in
1995 to 260 at the beginning of 1997, representing investment
in the order of 2 billion dollars. This massive influx of dollars,
together with the remesas - the currency that many Cubans receive
from exiled relations which amounts every year to about 500 million
dollars - has widened the gap between workers who have access
to the green notes and the great majority who have to survive
on their salary in pesos. Virtually unchanged since the revolution.
"We are witnessing the creation of a twotier society in Cuba"
says the ICFTU report, which warns that the social situation,
which has already badly deteriorated in the last few years, may
get even worse. The system set up by the authorities to avoid
this "dualisation" has reinforced the ICFTU's concern
that the "maquiladora" model prevalent throughout Central
America and notorious for worker exploitation and anti-trade union
attitudes will be reproduced in Cuba. The authorities have set
up "entities" responsible for finding labour for the
multinationals in exchange for strong currency, although the State
continues to pay workers in pesos. These are the same "entities"
which negotiate working conditions with the foreign enterprises
and the official trade unions take part in these negotiations.
It is not much of a guarantee, knowing that the official trade
unions main concem is to ensure "discipline" at the
work place and that their experience of collective bargaining
has mainly been limited to putting their signature on collective
contracts imposed by the government.
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