From Words to Action

From bland discourse to real action, consistent with the role that corresponds in the context of the economic and social transformations contained in the 176 measures, the General Secretary of the Cuban Workers’ Central (CTC), Osnay Miguel Colina Rodríguez, recently called.

With his clear and direct language, he expressed that today’s Cuba demands a union similar to the current economic, labor, and social framework.

«How to strengthen the work of the CTC and its unions? What concerns us, we have already debated,» he reiterated.

The 22nd Congress was an expression of that, he specified during an exchange with leaders from Matanzas.

He said that precisely the gathering set the key issues to which the trade union movement must devote itself to strengthen its structures, the assembly of members and workers, representation, conflict mediation, collective bargaining, the protection of labor and social rights, and thus, from participation and popular control, be able to contribute to the progress of productive activities.

«Decisions must be built from the grassroots, the preliminary figures of the economic and budget plan, control systems and environments, administrative accountability… We cannot see things in isolation, separately, but as part of a system,» he specified.

He acknowledged that «workers are in the collectives; situations happen there, in that space… We must push, demand, do, transform in the collective.»

He referred to the urgent need to remove the «fences» of the workplace, in order to reach that «closest portion of the community, the neighborhood, and be in a position to serve it comprehensively in the same place where the workforce lives.»

In those same spaces, he insisted, we have colleagues working remotely, distance workers, intermittent workers, as is happening here in Matanzas, some of whom have already lost their salary guarantees. And in those neighborhoods, he expressed, there are electricians, carpenters, plumbers.

«If all of them could be organized by the CTC and the unions into production and service brigades, for example, how many problems could be addressed, solved, and the organization strengthened?» asked the CTC General Secretary. «Our participation in ‘Mi barrio por la Patria’ (My Neighborhood for the Homeland) must be seen comprehensively,» he reiterated.

Colina insisted on the need to finally erase the distance between saying things and doing them. The maximum leader of the Cuban trade union movement called for «getting more involved in food production, energy transition, defense preparation, and relations with international unions.»

Photo: Colina reiterated that the organization’s three dimensions lie in strengthening the work of the CTC and its unions, interaction with the community, and attention to intermittent workers.

Photo: By the Author.