I have nearly finished.
But the United States is not satisfied with this illegal blockade, which has been almost universally condemned by the international community. The achievements of Cuban workers, retired persons and those on social assistance are threatened.
The president, Mr. George W. Bush, has had a de facto plan to annex Cuba approved, which includes in its first version of May 2004, a chapter entitled: Meeting basic human needs in the areas of health, education, housing and human services. It insists on eliminating the Cuban social security system. According to this plan, the Cuban economy and the government's budget after the transition will not be able to maintain the level and the applications for eligibility that the Communist system allowed for. In fact, this would be purely and simply to abolish the socio-economic rights of Cubans.
This brings me to the fourth and final subsection:Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
The right to free unionization is fully protected under Cuban legislation. All Cuban workers have the right to freely join unions and to set up trade union organizations without any preliminary permission being required. Neither the Labour Code in effecting Cuba nor its complimentary legislation establish any restrictions on the creation of unions. The Labour Code states, in its section 14, that Cuban workers have the right to meet, to discuss and to freely express their opinions on all issues and subjects adversely affecting them.
In Cuba, there are 19 national sectoral unions with communal and provincial structures in 169 communities and the 14 provinces of the country. There are over 80,000 union offices or basic unions, through which over half a million union leaders have been elected by secret and direct ballot. The national unions are part of a central union umbrella group, Central Workers Union of Cuba, founded in 1939, that is to say 20 years before the triumph of the Cuban revolution, through the joint wishes of Cuban workers.
Some would argue that these unions are controlled by the government and have no real power. I have been able to personally observe that this is not the case. Two years ago, the Minister of Cuban Tourism, Manuel Marrero Cruz, presented a code of ethics for employees in the tourism sector who were in contact with foreigners.
This code was an attempt to respond to a pressing demand by the Cuban population, exasperated at seeing the corruption that was developing because of the excessive purchasing power of the dollar in a subsidized economy. As soon as it was unveiled, this code of ethics was distributed and discussed by all workers in the tourist sector in their union meetings. It quickly became apparent that the draft code was considered to be too radical by many workers who agreed with the principles of the code, but not with the provisions and with their inflexibility. The unions reported these discussions to the department, the code was immediately suspended and the minister even apologized to the workers through a video that was broadcast by all the unions.
I personally experienced these events thanks to friends working in this area who allowed me to follow the story. Canadian workers would certainly be very happy if their unions were as powerful as the Cuban unions.