Vol. 80/No. 11      March 21, 2016

 

SWP leader ‘talks with Cuban construction workers’

Printed below are major excerpts from a Feb. 11 article in the Cuban trade union newspaper Trabajadores, titled “US Political Activist Talks with Cuban Construction Workers.”

The strength of the working class in Cuba was emphasized by activist Mary-Alice Waters, a member of the Political Committee of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States. She is visiting the island with a schedule filled mainly with presentations at the International Book Fair of books aiming to educate people in her country about Cuba.

She pointed to the Cuban people’s resistance to decades of an unjust blockade, in face of which they have nonetheless maintained a socialist revolution that is an example for the world.

Waters, who is also president of Pathfinder Press, had a brief exchange with members of the National Committee of the Union of Construction Workers (SNTC). She also participated in an event in which, for the second year in a row, the nonagricultural cooperative Autochapt received an award as an outstanding collective because of its extraordinary achievements in productivity and trade union work.

Autochapt, one of 69 such entities in this sector, is a vanguard in demonstrating the vast potential offered by this form of self-employment, said Carlos de Dios Oquendo, general secretary of the SNTC. Such efforts were strengthened after the [April 2011] Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba approved updating Cuba’s economic model.

Autochapt does body work, painting, and reupholstery to rebuild vehicles, especially those used in construction. Its workshops repair and completely rebuild heavy equipment such as cranes, trucks, and cement mixers. They also repair Transmetro city buses and rental cars for the tourist industry.

The event honored vanguard workers, most of them for their work in the union-organized emulation campaign. …

The afternoon awards included a declaration certifying that work areas in the plant have safe conditions. Roberto Betharte, head of the labor affairs department of the Central Organization of Cuban Trade Unions (CTC), said the award comes out of a movement initiated in the 1980s to promote safer working conditions, involving all the workers as well as administrators and union leaders.

Betharte said the cooperative had implemented steps to monitor safety and minimize occupational hazards and fatal accidents.

Osmany Batista Díaz, president of Autochapt, gave a brief history of the cooperative. It was established May 6, 2014, with 44 members, former employees of the Havana unit of the Empresa de Talleres de Cienfuegos that was part of the Ministry of Construction. Today it has 156 members, working in a plant more than twice the size of the original, in the Boyeros district of Havana.  

 
 
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