The Unitary Council of Trade Unions of Cuba (CUTC) has filed an amended complaint with the International Labor Organization (ILO), describing reported violations of the “Forced Labor Conventions,” in connection with a case involving the governments of Cuba and Curaçao, Netherland Antilles.
The amended complaint adds the CuraçaoDrydock Company and, importantly, the government of the Netherlands, which has jurisdiction over the Netherland Antilles.
The case involves three Cuban drydock workers who were among 108 shipyard hands at the CuraçaoDrydock Company who worked double shifts but whose pay was used to pay debts owed by the Cuban government to the company. Instead of getting paid the nearly $7.00 an hour they earned, the workers got money for food and about $18 a month in Cuban pesos.
“Three former dry-dock workers eventually escaped what their attorneys call a ”forced labor camp” in Willemstad, Curaçao, and filed the suit in U.S. District Court in Miami, alleging the Cuban government offered them up as slave labor to pay off its debts. Alberto Justo Rodríguez, Fernando Alonso Hernández and Luis Alberto Casanova Toledo, who now live in the Tampa Bay, Florida, area, sued the CuraçaoDry Dock Company, saying it forced them to work against their will while Cuban agents kept an eye on their every move,” according to news reports in the Miami Herald. Their boss at the jobsite was Manual de Jesus Bequer Soto Del Valle, the nephew of Fidel Castro’s wife, Dalia Soto Del Valle.
The drydock workers said they were forced to work 3 p.m. to 7 a.m. shifts 15 days in a row.
U.S. District Court in Florida ruled against the CuraçaoDrydock Company and ordered compensation of $80 million, which has not been paid. The CUTC amendment seeks redress against the government of the Netherlands.
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