December 7, 2011
By SAMUEL FARBER
(Part two of six excerpts from "Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959" )
HAVANA TIMES, Dec 7 — The general strike that took place immediately
after Batista fled the country in the early hours of January 1, 1959,
was not a class but a national action called by Fidel Castro and the
26th of July Movement. Practically the whole population supported the
strike, including the Cuban bourgeoisie and the middle classes, which
were still enjoying their "honeymoon" with the revolutionary leaders.
The January 1959 strike was the rebels' insurance policy against any
possible coup aimed at preventing them from achieving a total victory.
The strike became a national holiday when for a whole week tens of
thousands of people lined up to greet Castro and the rebel army in their
slow procession from the east of the island toward Havana.
Soon after, a huge wave of labor conflicts and strikes erupted
throughout the country, expressing the pent-up economic and political
frustrations of the Cuban working class during the Batista years, as
well as the great expectations aroused by the revolution.
Among many labor conflicts, there were work stoppages in twenty-one
sugar mills due to wage demands. Unemployed railway workers and workers
who had lost their jobs at a closed paper mill near Havana went on a
hunger strike. Employees of the Compañía Cubana de Electricidad, the
US-owned national electrical utility, declared a slowdown to demand a 20
percent increase in wages, and six hundred workers who had been
dismissed by the company in the previous two years demonstrated at the
Presidential Palace to demand their reinstatement.7
Fidel Castro and the revolutionary government tried to solve the myriad
labor problems that confronted them during this early period with a
clear and strong tilt in favor of the workers. Measures such as
substantial reduction in urban rents decreed in March 1959 contributed
to the development of the distributive radicalism that characterized the
early period of the revolution.
Castro, like any other intelligent observer, must have been aware that
such radicalism was the keystone for growing mass support for the
revolutionary government. On various occasions, as I indicated in
chapter 1, he expressed his concern with the type of consciousness
prevailing among the working class. Perhaps anticipating rougher times
ahead, Castro tried to "educate" the masses to trust and rely on the
regime rather than simply supporting a government that was delivering
the goods.
Castro's government, very much afraid of losing control of the working
class, let alone afraid of economic instability, tried to discourage
strikes. The government convinced the new revolutionary union movement
led by David Salvador, a former Communist who had become a 26th of July
Movement leader in the clandestine struggle against Batista, to go along
with its efforts in this direction.
For their part, the Communists still had an arms-length relationship
with the government and tried to push it in a more radical direction.
While the PSP voluntarily avoided calling for or encouraging strikes
even in the earliest days of the revolution, the party took the position
that "strikes, when they are necessary and just, help rather than harm
the Revolution."8
The friction between Fidel Castro and the PSP increased when several
Communists reportedly encouraged a few instances of "spontaneous" land
seizures. In response, Castro made clear in a televised interview on
February 19, 1959, that any persons involved in seizing land without
waiting for the Agrarian Reform Law would be engaging in criminal
conduct and lose their right to any benefits from the law.9 Three days
later the Communists retreated and agreed "that it was necessary to put
a stop to the anarchic seizures of land."10
Shortly after Batista fled the country, union halls throughout the
island were occupied by revolutionary trade unionists of various
stripes, with those associated with the 26th of July Movement most
numerous and influential. These new leaders quickly proceeded to purge
all the supporters of Eusebio Mujal—the "Mujalista" labor bureaucrats
who had collaborated with the Batista dictatorship.
A vigorous organizing campaign was quickly launched that greatly
enlarged the already sizable, although bureaucratic and corrupt, union
movement. In the spring, every single local union in the country held
elections, and these were followed by elections at the regional and
national level. This turned out to be the most important exercise in
autonomous grassroots democracy during the revolutionary period.
The candidates associated with the 26th of July Movement emerged as the
overwhelming winners, and the Communists managed to obtain only some 10
percent of the union posts (some of the elected 26th of July Movement
candidates did have Communist sympathies). In any case, the outcomes of
the spring union elections were remarkably consistent with the results
of the union survey the PSP had conducted in 1956.
The election results prodded the Communists into putting a great deal of
effort to increasing their influence in the organized working class,
which, as one might expect, provoked a great deal of conflict with their
political opponents inside the unions. Nevertheless, the elections of
delegates in early November for the Tenth Congress of the CTC
(Confederación de Trabajadores de Cuba, Confederation of Cuban Workers)
that was to take place later that month produced results very similar to
those of the spring elections.
Once the congress began, it was clear that the Communist delegation
would take a drubbing and would be excluded from the leadership bodies
of the labor confederation. At this point, Fidel Castro intervened and a
different leadership slate was approved. While well-known Communist
unionists were kept off the slate, the so-called unitarian elements of
the 26th of July Movement, who were friendly to the Communists and were
led by Jesús Soto were given a predominant and controlling role.
After the congress concluded, the Labor Ministry, under Fidel Castro's
control, assisted by the Communist union leaders and the "unitarian"
elements friendly to them, began to purge a large number of trade union
leaders who had resisted Communist influence, accusing them of being
"Mujalistas."11 The purge took place by means of purge commissions and
carefully staged and controlled union meetings instead of new elections.
About 50 percent of the labor leaders, most of whom belonged to the 26th
of July Movement and had been freely elected in the spring 1959 local
and national union elections, were removed; many were persecuted and
jailed as well.
Veteran PSP cadres and their "unitarian" collaborators took over those
leadership positions. Castro and his revolutionary government enjoyed
such great support in 1959 and 1960 that any labor leader they chose
could have easily been removed from office had there been new elections;
any slate of candidates supported by Castro and his government would
undoubtedly have won.12
However, from the Cuban leader's long-term perspective, new elections
would have allowed the unions to retain their autonomy. The purges
allowed the unions to be turned into his policy tools at a point when he
had begun to move politically toward the Soviet Union and the Cuban
Communists.
In August 1961, less than two years after the fateful Tenth Congress of
the CTC, the government approved new legislation that brought the nature
and function of Cuban trade unions into alignment with those of the
Soviet bloc. According to the new law, the main objectives of the unions
were to help in the attainment of the national production and
development plans; to promote efficiency and expansion of social and
public services; to improve the administration of all sectors of the
economy; and to carry out political education.13
A few years later, a CTC Declaration of Principles and Union Statutes
further elaborated on the role and duties of the Cuban unions as the
government's agents to impose production discipline. The unions had to
organize socialist emulation and unpaid labor; strictly apply labor
legislation, work quotas, wage scales, and labor discipline; promote an
increase of output; improve the quality of production; reduce costs and
maintain equipment; develop political consciousness; and expand
recreational, sports, and cultural facilities.14
Eventually, the unions were reorganized into fewer national unions such
that all workers in a given industry, regardless of their job
description, belonged to the same industrial unions. Membership in the
unions was supposedly "voluntary," a convenient fiction accepted by some
foreign observers who somehow failed to notice and acknowledge the
enormous coercive pressures to join the "mass organizations" of a
one-party state.15
The Eleventh CTC Congress, which took place in November 1961, could not
have been more different from the congress two years earlier. Unanimity
had now replaced controversy. With no contest allowed for the leading
positions at stake, all leaders were elected by acclamation. Not
surprisingly, old Stalinist leader Lázaro Peña regained the position of
secretary general that he had last held in the forties under Batista.
Of the seventeen national union leaders in 1959, only five remained in
the twelve-member leadership group "elected" at the conclusion of the
congress. In order to save production costs, the Eleventh Congress also
agreed to give up gains that many unions had won before the revolution.
It approved the eight-hour day, thereby adding work time to those union
members who had already gained the seven-hour day. The nine days of sick
pay, previously paid automatically, would be paid only to those who
could prove that they were actually sick. The extra month's pay as an
end-of-the-year bonus was abolished.
Although an abstract case could be made for the desirability of at least
some of these changes in a new socialist order, here they were imposed
from above with little or no discussion. There was no open confrontation
with the opposing views actually held by a large number of Cuban
workers, who could not openly express them, nor organize in support of
what they thought.
Undoubtedly, the benefits that the workers had otherwise obtained from
the revolution along with the then-prevailing revolutionary fervor in
the country greatly facilitated the government's ability to establish
its vision of the role of workers and unions under its version of socialism.
Even the dramatic change of leadership carried out at the 1961 congress
did not put an end to the process of erasing all remaining traces of
independent unionism. By the end of the Twelfth CTC Congress in 1966,
only one of the members of the 1961 national committee remained. Of the
twenty-five other heads of labor federations in 1961, only one remained
in office by 1966.
After 1961, several top leaders of the CTC had been removed and others
appointed by the party's political bureau, not by the CTC itself,16
without even the slightest regard for formality and appearances. In any
case, the radical change in leadership personnel within such a short
period of time was a faithful reflection of the no less drastic change
that had taken place in the nature and function of the Cuban unions. In
fact, the revolutionary leaders were politically quite upfront about the
changes that they had established in the unions.
Vice Premier Raúl Castro declared that "yesterday it was necessary [for
unions] to struggle continuously in order to gain certain advantages, to
obtain a little more from the profits being made by the magnates. Today
the great task confronting the CTC and the unions is to increase
production, recruit voluntary workers, tighten labor discipline, push
for higher productivity, and improve the quality of what is produced."17 }
In what amounted to a veritable "educational" campaign, similar
pronouncements were continually being made throughout the early sixties
by "new" Communist leaders such as Fidel Castro as well as by the
members of the Communist "old guard" such as Blas Roca.18
As one might expect, the character of collective bargaining itself also
changed. The Ministry of Labor published a model collective-bargaining
agreement in 1962 with instructions on how to implement it throughout
the various sectors of the economy. This model agreement followed
closely the Soviet regulations on collective bargaining published in 1947.19
Regarding the right to strike, during the first five years after the
victory of the revolution in 1959, various laws were enacted to regulate
labor conflicts. The Ley de Justicia Laboral (Law of Labor Justice),
enacted in 1964 and put into effect at the beginning of 1965,20 did not
mention strikes, following the Stalinist theory that since the workers
were the owners of the means of production they could not strike against
themselves.
In fact, the right to strike had been explicitly mentioned only in the
regulations that were in force until 1960. In June 1961, Ernesto "Che"
Guevara had put forward the notion that "the Cuban workers have to get
used to living in a collectivist regime and therefore cannot strike."21
Therefore, it was hardly surprising that the 1964 law did not mention
strikes and neither did the "socialist" 1976 constitution, even though
the progressive prerevolutionary constitution of 1940 had explicitly
declared the constitutional standing of the right to strike in its
article 71.
Indeed, the main overall purpose of the 1964 law was to strengthen labor
discipline and increase productivity. The law singled out for punishment
not only those workers who committed economic crimes like fraud but also
those who displayed signs of laziness, vagrancy, absenteeism, tardiness,
foot-dragging, or lack of respect for superiors, and who damaged equipment.
The law paired violations with three grades of punishment: light,
moderate, and serious penalties. Light penalties ranged from a simple
warning to a small wage cut. Moderate punishment included a major wage
cut or transfer to a different job in the same work location. Serious
penalties ranged from transfer to a different location, which could be
far from family members, to loss of employment.22
In mid-1969, a little over ten years after the victory of the
revolution, the minister of labor announced that the government was
preparing regulations for the "labor file" or identity card carried by
every Cuban worker. The official unions did not discuss the original
draft; they were eventually given some input into how the regulations
were to be administered after they became law in September 1969.
The labor file, or the "workers' biography," as the minister of labor
called it, would include the workers' merits, such as, for example,
overfulfillment of work quotas or overtime work without pay, as well as
demerits such as absenteeism, negligence in handling equipment, and
nonfulfillment of work quotas. The "labor file" would also record any
sanction or punishment applied to the worker by any of the relevant
disciplinary bodies and courts.23
Notwithstanding all the mechanisms of control that were introduced in
the sixties to make Cuban workers more productive, the government did
not feel they were effective enough. For one thing, absenteeism grew
throughout the late sixties and reached some 20 percent of the labor
force by late 1970. On October 15, 1970, Minister of Labor Jorge
Risquet, who had been politically formed in the ranks of the old
Communist Party, proposed resolution number 425, which in effect was a
vagrancy or antiloafing law that called for the placement of
nonproductive workers in labor camps.
From the government's point of view, this was preferable to
imprisonment since the labor camps would achieve the double purpose of
contributing to production and simultaneously segregating "lazy" people
and preventing them from influencing other workers. Before becoming law,
the proposal was presented for public discussion, supposedly to obtain
the workers' opinions but in reality to engage in a one-sided government
media campaign in support of the objectives and procedures of the
proposed law. The campaign succeeded in incorporating some 100,000 men
into production, which was after all one of the central objectives of
the proposed legislation.
Finally, on March 15, 1971, the government enacted the Law against
Laziness. According to this law, all men between the ages of seventeen
and sixty had to put in a full workday. Anyone who missed or left work
for fifteen days or more without justification or who had been
reprimanded by his work council at least twice would be classified as
being in a "precriminal state of loafing," while recurrent absentees
would be charged with the "crime of loafing."
Sanctions ranged from house arrest to internment in a rehabilitation
center doing forced labor for a period ranging from one to two years.
The law also lengthened the incarceration period and even authorized the
use of capital punishment for serious crimes such as "economic
sabotage." In all cases, the courts were to consider such factors as
age, the record of labor and social activities of the accused, and the
personal and family factors that may have affected the behavior of the
guilty party.24 We do not know the extent to which the law was
implemented in practice.
At the time, it was noted that the law against absenteeism and "loafers"
had actually been in the works for a considerable amount of time before
it was proposed in late 1970 and enacted into law in the spring of 1971.
The preamble to the law had actually been written as early as 1968, but
the law had not been decreed then because government leaders thought
that certain prerequisites had to be fulfilled before it could be
effectively implemented.
According to the Cuban minister of labor, these prerequisites included
(1) the total eradication of the private sector, excepting small farms,
making it impossible to hide the person's employment status, (2)
creation of personnel records for every worker, which were inaugurated
in 1969, and (3) a census of the population in order to have exact
information on manpower by region, zone, and street block.25
Samuel Farber
Footnotes:
7. Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (New York: Harper and
Row, 1971), 1196.
8. Blas Roca, "Huelgas o 'no huelgas,'" Hoy, 10 febrero 1959, 1.
9. Fidel Castro, Discursos para la historia (Havana: Imprenta Emilio
Gall, 1959), 1:137.
10. "Declaraciones del PSP: El PSP pide a los campesinos que impidan
pro si mismo las ocupaciones de tierras; Considera innecesaria y
peligrosa la Ley 87," Hoy, 22 febrero 1959, 1.
11. If such a claim had been correct, Mujal would have been shown to
have far greater support in the union movement than the government's
supporters had ever given him credit for! Regrettably, some social
scientists studying Cuba have accepted the Cuban government's claims at
face value. See, for example, Linda Fuller, Work and Democracy in
Socialist Cuba (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 47–56.
12. Marifeli Pérez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course and
Legacy, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 72–73.
13. Law 962, August 1, 1961, in Gaceta Oficial (special edition),
August 3, 1961, cited in Roberto E. Hernández and Carmelo Mesa-Lago,
"Labor Organization and Wages," in Revolutionary Change in Cuba, ed.
Carmelo Mesa-Lago, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), 212.
14. "Declaración de principios y estatutos de la CTC," El Mundo, July
6, 1966, cited in Hernández and Mesa-Lago in "Labor Organization and
Wages," 212.
15. A good example of this kind of inability to understand the reality
of Cuban labor is to be found again in Fuller, Work and Democracy in
Socialist Cuba, 43–44.
16. Domínguez, Cuba: Order and Revolution, 271–72.
17. Raúl Castro, Revolución, January 23, 1963, cited in Hernández and
Mesa-Lago, "Labor Organization and Wages," 212–13.
18. Fidel Castro, "Los buenos y los malos dirigentes obreros," speech
of June 15, 1960, reproduced in Diario Granma, 10 junio 2010,
www.granma.co.cu/2010/06/10/nacional/
artic03.html; Blas Roca, "El nuevo papel de los sindicatos bajo el
socialismo," Hoy, 28 febrero 1962, reproduced in Granma, 16 junio 2010,
3; and Blas Roca, "La disciplina en el trabajo," published as
"Aclaraciones de Blas Roca," Hoy, 1 julio 2010, reproduced in Granma, 1
julio 2010, 3.
19. Hernández and Mesa-Lago, "Labor Organization and Wages," 218–19.
20. Law 1166, September 23, 1964, in Gaceta Oficial, October 3, 1964,
cited in Hernández and Mesa-Lago, "Labor Organization and Wages," 219–20.
21. Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Revolución, June 27, 1961, cited in
Hernández and Mesa-Lago, "Labor Organization and Wages," 220.
22. Bunck, Fidel Castro and the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture, 136–37.
23. Hernández and Mesa-Lago, "Labor Organization and Wages," 237–38.
24. Bunck, Fidel Castro and the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture,
158–59; Mesa-Lago, Cuba in the 1970s, 95.
25. Maxine Valdes and Nelson P. Valdes, "Cuban Workers and the
Revolution," New Politics 8, no. 4 (Fall 1970): 44. The Valdeses in turn
drew from information that appeared in Granma on September 10, 1970.
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