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Dean Hubbard, president of the Labor Section of the National Lawyer Guild (NLG) of the United States does not hide his emotion while telling how he lived the 17D: “I was working and my son sent me a message to the cell phone: Dad, look what happens in Cuba! While I was reading the news, I was feeling a great joy. I honestly never expected to experience such thing.”
He now lives in Washington DC, but he worked in New York before and also in Colorado where he was born.
In 1998 he traveled to Cuba for the first time to participate in a conference of specialized jurists in Labor Law, main topic of the International Meeting of Labor Lawyers and the Union Movement that is every year held in Havana and that had recently concluded its ninth edition.
His condition as co-founder of the event – together with Guillermo Ferriol, president of the Cuban Society of Labor Law and Social Security.
Hubband recognizes that after years in the practice of law in the US, “the tendency is to think that ours is the only possible. Visiting Cuba and verifying the differences, means the restoration of our hope. Nothing is perfect in the world, but Cuba is unique. The right of all for Education, health and its natural position towards solidarity, makes this country an inspiration.”
Experts in the relations between Cuba and the US assert that President Barack Obama can do much more to free the Cubans from the punishment representing the blockade against Cuba. What do you think?
Goals announced for 17D are good, but at the end, as the President himself recognized, they keep their interest in changing the system. Obama talked about normal relations and to lift the laws that are the basis of the blockade, but he is still paying people to try to revert the tactics, but not the strategic and despite that, it won’t work.
Why are you so sure?
Because they are based on the illusion that in Cuba there is no civil society when in reality it is very strong, and is made by the Cuban Workers Federation (CTC) and other organizations that group students, women, farmers…
It is a base with decades of exercise they do not know. Meanwhile, they offer money to small groups of people (dissidents) whose real problem is that they are not happy in Cuba.
Another friction aspect is the inclusion of Cuba in the list of sponsors of terrorism.
Somehow, after the 17D, the goal was to take Cuba out from that list before the Summit of the Americas foresee for April 2015. I am not that sure it will happen, because Obama’s administration, although he has the power to do so, is subjected to the pressure of the right wing in Congress, which threatens him to freeze the funds of the projects also promoted by the president.
Which are the main labor conflicts of the Americans?
There are many, but among the worst are the attacks the extreme right wing do in several States against the rights of the workers. The reactionary forces have, for instance, organized the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that promotes the so called “laws of the working right” which attempt against the established form in the US in which workers from a union accept their quotas be subtracted from their wages.
The new law break that pact and the charge is even more different. They do not forbid to syndicate but they weaken is economical bases. This is just one of the routes to make more difficult the financing and organization of the workers to fight for their rights.
What other issues the labor lawyers of the US have?
Low salaries. They have decreased in the same extend that unionizing. Many people receive lower pays to the minimum rate and among them emerged Fighting for Fifteen, which claims for 15.00 dollars per hour as minimum pay. They have gone on strike and for April 15 they made a call for a national strike.
This movement is mainly made of workers from restaurants and cafeterias of fast-food and Wallmart Markets for example.
