BY JOE SWANSON

DES MOINES, Iowa - In a recent telephone interview Ignacio Meneses, national coordinator of the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange, pointed to the importance of workers from the United States visiting Cuba and finding out for themselves the genuine situation and the character of Cuban unions. The Labor Exchange has coordinated regular exchange trips to Cuba over the last five years, including the most recent trip of over 50 unionists to attend the 17th Congress of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC) in April. Upcoming labor trips to Cuba include a November 23-December 2 seminar and an international labor conference there next summer.

The participants in the delegation to the CTC congress were rank-and-file workers, full-time union organizers, shop stewards, and retired officials from over twenty unions. The delegates came from more than two dozen cities from coast to coast. A number of those who attended the CTC congress organized report-backs to union locals or house meetings with fellow unionists. Many wrote articles for their union newsletters, were interviewed by local newspapers or radio shows, and worked through their local Cuba solidarity coalitions to speak at broader public meetings.

These experiences lay the groundwork for the next Labor Exchange trip. Meneses explained that unionists have begun sending in their applications for the November labor seminar later this year. The group will be hosted by the CTC and will stay at the Lazaro Peņa school of the Cuban trade union federation. Participants will visit three Cuba cities so that they will have an exchange with rank-and-file Cuban workers and CTC leaders. U.S. workers on the trip will be visiting the Cienfuegos nuclear power plant, a factory that builds the Mercedes Benz engines for the sugar care cutters, and will visit a hospital, as well participate in the family doctor program, Meneses said.

In addition , there will be a two-day meeting in Havana with trade unionists from other countries who will be in Cuba to begin organizing for the International Labor Conference on NeoLiberal Economics and Globalization of the Economy, which the CTC will host in Cuba in late July and early August of 1997.

The Labor Exchange has published a booklet on the 17th Congress of the CTC. It is entitled Se Puede Mucho Juntos! We Can do Much Together! and contains the transcript of a meeting of the U.S. Labor Exchange delegation with Pedro Ross Leal, general-secretary of the CTC. The delegation was able to interview Ross a day before the CTC congress began. The booklet also contains excerpts of Ross's speech at the opening ceremony of the congress and major excerpts of the speech given by Fidel Castro, president of Cuba and first-secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba at the closing session of the CTC congress. Meneses said the Labor Exchange also has a video available that was filmed during the April trip. It features footage of the 17th CTC congress, May Day 1996 in Havana, and some of the factories, schools, and hospitals the delegation visited.

For more information about the U.S.-Cuba Labor Exchange, or if you are interested in attending the November labor seminar in Cuba and need an application or to request a order of the booklet or video, contact the U.S.-Cuba Labor Exchange, P.O. Box 39188, Redford, MI 48239. Phone: (313) 836-3752. Fax: (313) 836- 3752.

Joe Swanson is a member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1149, Perry, Iowa. He participated in the April Labor Exchange delegation to the CTC congress.  
 
 
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