BY SETH GALINSKY
MIAMI - Some 55 trade unionists from across the United States will be traveling to Cuba at the end of April to attend the 17th Congress of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC).

Ignacio Meneses, national coordinator of the U.S/Cuba Labor Exchange, which is organizing travel for most U.S. unionists to the event in Havana, said that members of about 18 unions will be part of the delegation. Among them are members of the International Association of Machinists, National Education Association, Service Employees International Union, United Auto Workers, Union of Electronic Workers (UE), and the United Transportation Union.

Many of the participants are full-time union organizers, shop stewards, and retired union officials, Meneses said. There are also a dozen rank-and-file workers. The U.S. unionists are coming from more than two dozen cities, ranging from Los Angeles, California, to Des Moines, Iowa.

Discussion among refinery workers
Patti Iliyama, an oil worker at the Lyondell-CITGO refinery near Houston, is going to the CTC congress with the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange group along with a co-worker. Iliyama is a member of Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Local 4-227.

"The response of my co-workers has been very interesting," Iliyama said. "Some people have argued that [Cuban president Fidel] Castro is a dictator and want to know what I think I will accomplish by going.

"But others think it's really great I'm going. They have an image of Cuba as a country of fighters."

Iliyama has been distributing on the job and discussing with fellow unionists the theses for the CTC congress, a document prepared by the union federation's National Committee after a round of CTC conferences organized in every municipality in Cuba last year.

The theses were discussed at thousands of factory assemblies and other workplace meetings in the Caribbean island between January 15 and March 15. The Militant translated the document and published it in a four-part series in its March 18, March 25, April 1, and April 8 issues (to get a copy send $3.00 to the Militant at the address listed on page 2).

"We've also started collecting material aid to bring to the Cuban workers," Iliyama said.

This is the largest delegation the Labor Exchange has helped organize over the last several years, Meneses stated. "Along with attending the CTC conference we will also be visiting factories and agricultural cooperatives."

The U.S. Health-care Trade Union Committee of Local 1199 of the hospital workers union in New York is also organizing a smaller delegation.

For travel information from the United States contact the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange at (313) 836-3752.

Seth Galinsky is a member of the United Transportation Union in Miami  
 
 
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