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The union movement has never been alien to Ulises Guilarte De Nacimiento. When he graduated as engineer in Automatic Control started working in a building enterprise in Cienfuegos, a central province of Cuba, and since then, he began to stand out as union leader at different levels until he was appointed secretary general of the Construction Union in Cuba. Later he was posted as first secretary of the former province of La Habana now divided into two and renamed Mayabeque and Artemisa.
He was the first secretary general of Artemisa until he was named to head the Organizing Commission for the 20th Congress of the Cuban Workers Federation (CTC).
He is 49 years old and admits those experiences have been vital for the responsibility he has been appointed, because man is the central point of all.
Guilarte gave Trabajadores newspaper the opportunity to interview him and we published it for our readers. Guilarte is also member of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party.
How do you value the processes developed before the 20th Congress of the CTC?
A Workers’ Congress is not possible to organize without the active participation of its affiliates, due to its importance in the different spheres of the political and economic life of the country. I believe it was of great importance all the activities held on the base, gathering the opinions of the workers in their base organizations. We consulted the affiliates on the Draft Project of the Labor Code; they renovated their leaders and debated the Base Document for the 20th Congress of the CTC.
We managed to gather more than half a million concrete proposals, 129,000 renovation processes, 171,000 opinions in the debate of the Labor Code and 1192,000 in the debate of the Base Document.
It was a wide, democratic and active exercise of union’s debates, where the job of the organization is really carried out. They are the ones who contribute with the creative and renewal thoughts of how they want the union work.
In the debates they criticized some deficiencies of the organization that hampered the leading role of the CTC. I could see the need of the affiliates to fight with more objectivity and efficiency to represent their rights as workers.
Which were the most important topics debated by the workers?
Among the most debated were: organization and normalization of the work, labor discipline, security and health in their jobs, labor re-organization and employment from the new proposals of procedures; labor hiring, the strengthening of the labor justice and the improvement of labor conditions.
They demanded to increase the level of performance of the union integrally, strengthen the spaces of participation in the economic procedures, the police to select the leaders, the improvement in the methods to play the role of the affiliate assembly, of representatives, Socialist Emulation, and they also dealt with affiliation and its basically political concept. The topic that was debated the most was that related to the wage. The opinion was focused to the insufficiency of the current conditions and the impact on the undercapitalization of the labor force and the motivation elements to have access to high rank posts.
It is emphasized in the Base Document of the 20th Congress what kind of Union we want. In your opinion which one do you consider should be?
We hope to have a fighting union committed to high responsibility to lead the workers; without repeated slogans, debate, who denounce and face violations of the workers’ rights; a union that due to its results and capacity to call, will be able to mobilize and get the reserves back on its feet it terms of efficiency in the labor staffs, to be able to present alternatives for the solution of the problems. That will give us authority, prestige and credibility in front of our affiliates and the administration.
In your opinion, what are the challenges facing the union movement to fulfill the role of representative and leader of workers in the updating of the Cuban economic model?
The union movement has gone together and supported the police to update and improve the Cuban political model when we are getting inside the most complex measures. The main challenge is to be able to consciously and permanently mobilize workers to help nothing would hamper the steady and sustainable advance.
In fact, we have demonstrated so in these years while arguing on the police aimed to the elimination of free services and subsides, the labor reorganization, the structural and functional improvement of the Central Administration Organisms of the State and significantly, the organization of the on-state employees.
In my view point, the challenge is to have the capacity to convince of its justice and also have the possibility to demonstrate the workers we are in pursuit to improvement and adapting to the socialist production model of property.
The state enterprise will keep on playing the main role; will still governing the economy’s planning and we will not apply clash therapies, that is socialism and we have to guide that mobilizing exercise of the workers and their support in the strict and efficient fulfillment in the union base.
The union assembly has been widely questioned in the last period. According to you, how should we turn this meeting in a real space to debate in the labor staffs?
The main working scenario of the union is just the labor staff. There is where the union’s life is developed, where the tasks find their practical materialization.
Lazaro Pena clearly defined it when he said that the union is the assembly, because its affiliates are there, without assembly, there is no union.
We have been criticized on the formal elements and the discredit that in such extent had the union’s assemblies.
The 96 percent of the assemblies are developed in the country; nevertheless, the greatest dissatisfaction is just in quality and content.
We should concentrate our efforts there, so they, first of all, deal with and debate on matters that worry the staff. In fact we are give proposals to change the Regulations, in relation to the frequency and content, corresponding to the characteristics of the territories or workplace.
The assembly is sovereign and what strengthens the union is what its members pass, the democratic and collective result of the debate.
Reports handed in by the administrations are frequently not clear enough and the workers do not understand what they are talking about.
Article 14 of the current Labor Code recognizes the administration’s responsibility about the information of the economic planning of the labor staffs and respond to the agreements.
We are now working on the Regulations of the Labor Code and it is the moment we will strengthen in which staff business platforms the responsibility of the administration will be set up to respond, argue, not with technological numbers or full of statistical elements, but with valuation, which will allow the extraordinary reserves we have in productive efficiency come to light in each workplace.
How can the lack of functions be reverted between productivity and wage?
The greatest recognition a worker can have in material term in the wage and that it can satisfy its need.
At present it is unsatisfactory in the increase of he prices in the basic products and the continuity of the salaries to the workers.
While the affiliates were debating these issues they have identified with precision that in the current conditions of our economy, it is neither possible to go to a general reform of neither salaries, nor we should become stagnant. There is a group of premises, in efficiency terms, which conditions that where welfare is generated, we could increase salary, and it corresponds to the Guidelines 19, 170, 171, 40 and 41.
First of all we should create welfare. It is not possible distribute something is not created. That is a condition we should all understand. Where that welfare is generated, we should distribute it.
The lack of control of the resources has brought about countless crimes…
We have recognized with self-criticism the failure in effectiveness to stop the participation of the workers in this degrading phenomenon in a staff.
Our relatives always said: “Poor but honest”, and we have been losing those values, people do not fight that phenomenon as hard as necessary.
There is vulnerability in several workplaces. We have identified 845 staff in Cuba which are denominated to have the highest vulnerability, where they greatest actions are carried out, and we go there every month to discuss with the staff.
It there is a robbery, we do not grant any moral recognition. It is a battle that takes time and meanwhile we have the greatest capacity of recognition of the causes and conditions that helps them, we will be in the best moment to design more effective actions.
How do you visualize emulation at present?
The summary of the 6th Congress of the Communist Party strongly criticized the union movement and the 89 plenary of the National Council of the CTC assumed it and had the capacity to design conceptual changes aimed to the recovery of its mobilizing essence, taking into consideration three basis premises: to be carried out in the workplaces and eliminate the pomp and ceremony and great plenary surrounding it. The second is the top rigor in its evaluation and the third the recognition to the results only, not to the effort.
In the documents of the Congress were are saying that the socialist emulation will keep on being a mobilizing influence and instrument of direction in the union movement with the purpose to promote the increase of labor productivity, saving, efficiency and also the recognition of the best experiences.
It is been said that a better trained union is needed, in which sense?
The recognition to the union will have today an exercise of representation, for the recognition of the people of its usefulness to defend their rights, representing its duties, mobilizing its affiliates, and the variable that determines it, is to know labor legislation, be an expert in Tax Law, the legal elements that will allow represent the workers in a labor conflict, have economic training.
Self employees have turned today into an important force of the union movement, what is the organization doing with them?
The labor scenario of the country has changed with the new labor force of self employees which has been steadily increasing. In 2009 they were about 159,000 and today they are 447,000.
Studies show that in about two years more they could reach a million self-employees.
Under those premises, the union movement have grouped them and today the 65 percent of them are affiliated, that is, those that did not have a job. We have advanced in organization of structures in the union sections of the self- employees which are now more than 1,500 in the country. We also managed to recognize their main rights in the Labor Code.
What do you expect with the 20th Congress of the CTC?
Have the capacity to fully understand the rich renewable and creative thought expressed in our union sections as result of more than a year union debate.
The other issue is that the agreement of this Congress will lead our workers to a greater political maturity in the implementation of the Guidelines of the First Conference of the Communist Party.
The other great expectation is to have a union movement that will have the recognition of our affiliates, to put into practice those rich and extraordinary fighting traditions, to have the capacity to keep united the Cuban Workers Federation and its labor class together with Fidel and Raul Castro and the Communist Party of Cuba. Those are the greatest expectation we have with this Congress.
Acerca del autor
Graduada en Licenciatura en Periodismo en la Facultad de Filología, en la Universidad de La Habana en 1984. Edita la separata EconoMía y aborda además temas relacionados con la sociedad. Ha realizado Diplomados y Postgrados en el Instituto Internacional de Periodismo José Martí. En su blog Nieves.cu trata con regularidad asuntos vinculados a la familia y el medio ambiente.
