Fernando Damaso, 21 November 2015 — The official media is continually promoting the need for self-employed workers to affiliate themselves with the unions of the Cuban Workers Center (CTC). No matter how much they repeat the calls for it, achieving it seems to be a difficult task.
The principal reason could be that the CTC forms a part of the government organizations, which make up the fabric of unconditional support for the Party, which directs and controls them, even naming their leaders in various instances.
In reality, the CTC doesn’t really represent Cuban workers, most of them working for the state, and much less can it claim to represent the self-employed as well. The CTC, for more than half a century, has defended first and foremost the interests of the Party and of the Government, and the problems of the workers only when they do not contradict those of the former.
To exercise its true role, the CTC must first democratize and make sure that its leaders, in every instance, ride from the ranks of the workers they are supposed to represent, and be nominated and directly elected by them, without the intervention of the Party and the Government.
To date, the majority come from the ranks of Party bureaucrats, without any direct ties to unionism, nor even with the current government in the country. As long as this doesn’t change, the CTC, lost its activism from the era of the Republic, and will only be one more government organization of control, in this case of the workers.
Self-employed workers should not allow themselves to be confused by the siren’s song, as it has confused workers for the stat. As long as there are no truly independent unions, their rights will not be defended.
