Workers' Memorial day, sponsored by the United Nations (UN), was celebrated on April 28. This day "explored the theme of safe and healthy working environments as a fundamental principle and right at work." This opened a cycle that closed this May Day, also recognized by the UN as International Workers' Day. As throughout the last six decades, in every municipality of Cuba there was a parade organized by the regime, although this time it was held on May 5 due to the fuel shortage.
In countries with totalitarian leftist systems, such as Cuba, May Day is used to celebrate the supposed achievements that make the "emancipated and empowered proletariat" proud. In democratic countries, such as Spain, the date is used to demand labor rights (the original purpose of the celebration). Castroism has hijacked the day to the point that workers on the island cannot demand changes in their work environment. May Day parades in Cuba are not conceived for that, but to show support for the regime.
During the spring march that takes place in the "revolutionary squares" (most of the provincial capitals have stages replicating the former Plaza Cívica), there is no mention of the episodes that have revealed the precariousness, insecurity and lack of protection of employees at their workplaces, while the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (a union that represents the interests of the regime) does not condemn these working conditions or defend those affected by them.
Last March 26, custodian Iosbel Olivera Mesa, 36, died in an apparent accident at the Urbano Noris sugar mill in Holguín. "He was in an area that was not operating at first, and when the second auger came into operation, the unfortunate accident occurred. He suffered injuries incompatible with life," the official report stated. In comments to that publication, Alexander Parra Suárez, who, according to his Facebook profile works at the Department of Engineering of the University of Holguín, said, "The administration should review the signaling of risk areas at the power plant and the training of workers on risks and safety at work, to prevent other fatal accidents."
The Urbano Noris is the largest sugar mill in Holguín province and one of the largest in Cuba, together with the Jesús Menéndez sugar mill and the Uruguay sugar mill in the state of Espiritu.
The quality of work environments, however, does not necessarily influence their importance according to the Government. In Cuba, job security is always of secondary importance. Edel González, who served as president of the People's Provincial Court of Villa Clara, offered his testimony to DIARIO DE CUBA about his experience in these cases.
"Part of my administrative responsibilities involved ensuring the hygiene, safety and health of judicial workers in the province. Also, the prestige of the premises and human capital, because the image of the whole was part of the institutional image that we tried to develop," said Gonzalez.
"I was particularly interested, for almost four consecutive years, in guaranteeing the Court's hygiene workers a pair of shoes suitable for their work," Gonzalez continued. "It was a measure that had been pending for a long time from the Occupational Health and Safety Group. I was looking for ones known as 'little shoes' (zapitos) similar to those that the tourism sector gave to its workers. All the actions, even with foreign currency in the accounts we administered, founded. I left still owing this to this noble personnel, who must continue working with whatever shoes they can manage to come up with. It is worth remembering that these workers are among those who receive the lowest salaries at the courts."
"I repeatedly went to shopping centers specialized in the sale of these supplies, and I got nothing. On two occasions I was told that importations of these resources were very scarce, and they were expressly earmarked for a specific entity: GAESA. Unfortunately, we were not a priority," he concluded.
According to Article 127 of Law 116/2013 of the National Assembly of Popular Power: "employers are obliged to adopt measures that guarantee safe and hygienic working conditions, as well as the prevention of work accidents, occupational diseases, fires, breakdowns and other damage that may affect the health of workers and work environments."
Article 131 of the same law states that "employers are obliged to control, investigate and inform the corresponding authorities of occupational accidents and other similar accidents for the purposes of Social Security protection."
One of the most frequently violated regulations is Article 135: "Employers are obliged to instruct workers on the risks at work and the procedures to perform their work in a safe and healthy manner."
In the case of the testimony offered by the former president of the People's Provincial Court of Villa Clara, Article 136 was violated: "Personal protective equipment consists of the devices and means that a worker is required to use individually to protect himself against one or more risks that may threaten their safety and health (...). It includes clothing and footwear, which fulfill the function of protection against existing risks at work."
The same article is violated, with even worse consequences, in the case of agricultural workers, who often have to work in fields in flip-flops and without means of protection, such as gloves, when fumigating plantations or fertilizing soil.
Last month, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) condemned the existence of "systematic patterns of labor rights violations" in Cuba.
According to the report on the subject presented at the University of Miami, the absence of democracy prevents "the full exercise of labor human rights, which are also affected by the peculiar socioeconomic context that the country is going through and which are linked to situations of labor precariousness, the worsening of hiring conditions, the absence of measures to protect occupational health and safety, and a lack of freedom of expression in the workplace, resulting in disciplinary sanctions, expulsions and unjustified dismissals."
Last March, a worker bled to death in Old Havana after cutting his leg with a saw and waiting to be taken to a hospital, along with another accident in a refrigeration workshop in Old Havana, where two other workers died. "I saw when they pulled him out and it was impossible for him to survive, he had a hand hanging by a thread and a completely destroyed leg. The other mechanic was already dead on the spot. The deaths of both of them are very regrettable, they were good, hardworking people. They had to scrap just to survive, and to start spot welding at dawn with makeshift equipment, without safety measures, which cost them their lives," a local resident told DIARIO DE CUBA.
The worst thing is that the State often fails to compensate those who have suffered injuries at work. In March 2022 it came to light that for eight years former sailor Juan Alexander Morales Gonzalez had been asking the shipping company Northsouth Maritime (formerly Nordstrand Maritime), part of the military business conglomerate GAESA, a labor compensation for illness that the company refused to pay. During this time of extended litigation, the Ministry of Transportation, the Council of State and the People's Supreme Court refused to compensate this man for the physical damage he suffered due to his grueling work.
Rocking the boat or reporting irregularities at work can also entail adverse consequences for workers. In July of last year the case of a worker at the Empresa Avícola de Guantánamo who suffered harassment at work for reporting the corruption that surrounded her made the news.
When the activities condemned have to do with politics, the punishments are usually calculated to make an example of whistleblowers. In recent years, the Cubalex Legal Advisory Group and the Observatory for Academic Freedom (OLA) have documented several cases of politically motivated sanctions against workers in Cuba, in violation of the Constitution itself.
Such is the case of journalists José Luis Tan Estrada and José Raúl Gallego, professors Manuel de la Cruz and Caleb Martínez Delgado, and academics Julio Merladet and Yahima Díaz. Other workers include Yordanka Battle Moré, Leonel Capote, Ariel Fernández Pérez and Zamay Espinosa.
Labor sanctions against these people were used as a form of punishment for exercising their rights to freedom of conscience, opinion, expression and association, as well as their right to protest and political participation.
Pedro Hamed Fajardo Armas, the Cuban longshoreman who complained of "a silent strike" at the Port of Cienfuegos in February 2021, was fired. "They didn't even take into account the number of years I was there. I don't know how I'm going to support my children, my family," the man told DIARIO DE CUBA at the time.
In Cuban workplaces, the minimum conditions to perform work properly are not guaranteed. In August 2022, the serious energy crisis suffered by Cuba forced the Government to announce measures that had an impact on state workers and their salaries. Relocations, vacations and indefinite suspensions were the solutions dictated by the regime.
A month earlier, more than 2,000 workers were subject to labor expulsion processes in Sancti Spíritus province due to the implementation of a package of measures aimed at "strengthening socialist state enterprises."