Good Distribution and Attention to Whom
During the first three months of the year, the financial statements of the companies are the starting point of a financial year of transcendental relevance for the workers’ collectives, which usually generates a great deal of concern: the distribution of profits.
Generally, during the last weeks of December, the final push begins to collect as much as possible and to guarantee the fulfillment of the sales plans, the first requirement for the subsequent closing of the accounts to ring the company’s cash register and the pockets of those who guaranteed the profit.
People already have more or less a ballpark, as we like to say, as to whether or not they will receive this additional income, what they do not know is how much, and sometimes there is impatience as to when they will receive it.
Because it turns out that agility in this process is fundamental for the national economy, but also for those who work. A tangle in the accounts, a delay in the calculations, can lead to a delay in the distribution of profits among the workers.
The final accounting and financial exercise of the year must follow the same rules that prevailed during the quarterly closings, but now it is necessary to make a collective decision on the destination of the profits after the payment of the tax (not a minor detail for which the companies have until March 31).
For grassroots trade union organizations, this is a crucial moment that requires their participation in the decision-making of the executive board. It is crucial that the union leader be well prepared for these debates. Sometimes the decisions are even taken person to person, because what should not happen is an egalitarianism in the benefits that each person receives.
In this final distribution it is also necessary to subject to a critical exercise all the regulations that govern this moment. A new economic cycle is beginning and this is the time to correct what is wrong or unfair. The bargaining capacity of the union, based on the preparation of its leaders, will determine the success of this distribution of profits.
The indexes, coefficients, scales, differences between direct and indirect personnel to production, the controversial issue of management cadres, performance evaluations, in short, every detail that determines who receives more or less money, must be transparent and submitted for discussion in the appropriate collegial body.
Trade union leaders would do well to carry out their own prior analysis in order to arrive at common, solid and well-founded positions for the administrative scenario in which the final agreements will be approved.
To the extent that it works well, it will be effective or not as an incentive for good work, this extra income that the workers will receive. There can be no doubt, nor can we go around later in the corridors making comments about what this or that department, this or that person, has received.
In the same way, it is necessary to accept with arguments the explanation about the rest of the objectives for the utilities. There are economic benefits that do not have to be only individual.
The possible uses of the reserves must be known and approved by the workers. It is necessary to distribute well and to see to whom.
Legal, but Unfair Decision
Juanita Perdomo Larezada
For two consecutive years, the shareholders’ meetings of the joint ventures under which Iberostar Parque Central, in Havana, and Royalton Hicacos, in Matanzas, operate, have decided not to approve the creation of the Economic Stimulation Fund (FEE, in Spanish), and it is likely that the same will happen in 2025.
As was to be expected, the discontent became a permanent client of two key facilities in the country’s tourism operations, both for their weight in the amount of foreign currency income and for their efficiency in operations concluded with profits, which is the source of the aforementioned FEE.
However, there are no violations in the decision of the partners of these joint ventures, because they have simply accepted the provisions of Law 118 on Foreign Investment, which leaves the creation or not of such a fund to the will of the parties, something legitimate, even if it sounds controversial.
According to the interpretation, this right is contained in Article 29.1 of that law, in force since 2014, and to which the eyes were turned seven years later, with the beginning of the monetary and exchange rate order, and the elimination of the incentives in convertible pesos (CUC), which in the case of mixed hotels had been an attractive monthly payment system of 2 or 3% of the profits. At that time, they were the dream place.
Thus it was the turn of Article 29.1, which was used for the first time in 2022, when a very low percentage corresponding to 2021 was distributed, amounts that fortunately had a significant increase in 2023 and 2024, other joint ventures rewarded 3,784 workers of the Cubanacán business group. Despite the recognition in these collectives that «nothing has been violated,» for more than two years the union has been promoting the idea of seeking a variant to protect the right to be paid for the wealth created.
This newspaper is a faithful witness to the fact that, despite the fact that it has been requested in meetings of members, representatives and tribunals at the highest level, the matter is still pending resolution, with the cost of a significant exodus of labor and negative impact on the quality of tourism processes, despite the requests made in meetings of members, representatives and tribunals at the highest level. And if it is worrying that they leave, it is worse if it ceases to be the place they dreamed of.
It is not all bad news for these facilities. The longest running of its proposals by the Third Conference of the National Union of Hotel and Tourism Workers may have found relief in the approval of a wage increase, a variant that will not resolve the issue in question.
The FEE is a way for the employees of this type of foreign investment to benefit from the mobile part of the wage structure. If its creation is not approved, this legitimate right would be prevented and the principle of socialist distribution from each according to his ability, to each according to his work would be denied.
A definitive solution seems to have the complex issue in the inclusion of the Foreign Investment Law in the legislative schedule of the National Assembly of People’s Power of 2026, not only because of the possibility that it establishes as mandatory the creation of the FEE, equivalent to the profits, but also because the current legal norm was left at a disadvantage with the advanced transformations and payment systems approved for the socialist state enterprise.
Until that moment comes, many are inclined to change the content of their regulations, because what is legal is not always fair. The hotels Iberostar Parque Central and Royalton Hicacos confirm this.
