Focus on Cuba
 Laura Pollán, a human rights activist who founded the Ladies in White, a Cuba-based group of female relatives of political prisoners, was posthumously honored in mid-December by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Pollán, who died in October 2011, had been a high school teacher with no involvement in politics until her husband, Héctor Maseda, became one of 75 anti-regime activists arrested by Cuban authorities in 2003 as part of a crackdown on dissidents. Pollán’s husband was released from prison in February 2011 – he was among one of the last of the Group of 75, as it came to be known, to be set free.
Her initial small gatherings in her home with the wives, mothers and daughters of other political prisoners became the Ladies in White – so called because of the all-white attire of the women – and held weekly marches in Havana. In Spanish, they are called Las Damas de Blanco.
Pollán became one of the best-known and most vocal opposition figures in Cuba, risking arrest herself, and reprisals of others acting on behalf of the Communist regime.
She was honored with NED’s Democracy Service Medal, which was first awarded [...]
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Cuban state security police are now telling the Ladies in White not to attend Sunday mass.
Recently, six Ladies in White, among them Sandra Guerra, Elizabeth Kawooya, and Dignora Figueredo, were called in and threatened at dawn on a Saturday by the political police in Havana and told not to attend Sunday services at Santa Rita’s Church. Megaly Norvis, leader of the Ladies in White and an independent journalist, was detained by police. Hours later, Ms. Guerra reported that while they were getting ready to protest in front of the Capitol, Ms. Norvis had had been released.
In mid-December, the Ladies in White paid homage to their late leader while observing International Human Rights Day at her home. A jeering pro-government crowd surrounded them.
Photos of the late Laura Pollán and messages of condolence adorned the wall of the house where she lived in central Havana and that served as a headquarters for the Ladies since the group was formed in 2003. Next to a lit candle, an empty chair was draped with white clothing that belonged to Pollán. A single gladiola and a tiny Cuban flag rested on the lap.
“Laura Pollán lives!” [...]
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The United States is renewing calls for Cuba to release imprisoned U.S. contractor Alan Gross, who has served two years behind bars on state security charges.
White House spokesman Jay Carney called for Havana to free the contractor immediately, saying it is “past time” for Gross to be allowed to return home to his family, where he belongs.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner also made similar comments in a statement on Gross:
“I want to note that Alan Gross has begun his third year of unjustified imprisonment in Cuba. He was arrested on December 3, 2009, and later given a 15-year prison sentence by Cuban authorities for simply facilitating connectivity between Havana’s Jewish community and the rest of the world.”
Toner described Gross as a 62-year-old husband, father and dedicated professional with a long history of providing assistance and support to underserved communities in more than 50 countries.
Gross was arrested for bringing communications equipment into Cuba while working for a private firm contracted with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The company says he was working for USAID’s Cuba democracy program, bringing Internet access to Cuba’s Jewish community. Gross has said his actions were not intended to be a [...]
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HAVANA – Laura Pollán, founder and leader of the Cuban dissident group Ladies in White, died October 14 in a local hospital after a brief illness. The cause of death was said to be cardiac arrest.
Ms. Pollán was remembered at a service the next day with a simple altar in her home and vows that the dissident group she founded would go on. A blue vase holding the ashes of Ms. Pollán sat on a small table with several photos of her and flowers brought by friends, among them diplomats. She was 63 years old.
“The late Laura Pollán and all the Ladies in White have long represented the Cuban people’s desire for liberty and for freedom of thought and expression,” noted the Committee for Free Trade Unionism. “Their peaceful weekly protests after Sunday mass each week of the denial of liberty to any who would oppose the Castro regime stand as a beacon for all who support human rights.
“Laura Pollán’s premature death was surely hastened by the harassment and government-sponsored denunciations which she and all the Ladies in White have suffered in recent months.
“The Castro government, having finally released [...]
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HAVANA – In late September, an organized pro-government mob of around 300 people, along with State Security agents with loudspeakers that resonated speeches by Fidel Castro, and who were screaming slogans, insults, obscenities, and carrying flags and posters, surrounded the home of one of the representatives of the peaceful human rights group of women known as the “Ladies in White”.
Some 35 women from numerous provinces were gathered at the Havana home of Laura Pollán to make their usual once-a-year pilgrimage by foot to attend mass at the Church of Our Lady of Mercy, patron saint of prisoners. The women were brutally assaulted by plainclothes State Security agents when they tried to leave the house. The mob pounced on them, hitting, twisting their arms, and even biting the women.
Pollan said her home had been monitored since the previous day and she didn’t know why her group was not allowed to march as they have on September 24 in past years. She accused the government of coordinating the act of repudiation.
“These are people who are brought in because they’re always the same ones,” Pollan said.
The pro-Castro mob kept screaming “they will not [...]
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The new Independent Trade Union Coalition of Cuba (CSIC) has issued a lengthy “Declaration of Principles and Objectives” aimed at expanding labor rights on that island nation and indicating its readiness to fight for democracy and freedom.
The CSIC was formed in Havana last spring by key independent labor organizations in Cuba: the Confederación de Trabajadores Independientes de Cuba (CTIC), the Confederación Obrera Nacional Independiente de Cuba (CONIC), and the Consejo Unitario de Trabajadores Cubanos (CUTC).
In the document, the CSIC states its commitment to fundamental human and labor rights and its readiness to fight for democracy, freedom and the development of Cuban workers, while defending them against the threats arising from economic plans recently agreed to by the VI Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba.
Those plans, among other things, provide for the massive layoff of 1.3 million workers.
In all, the “Declaration” includes nearly three dozen principles, many of which are in direct opposition to what Fidel and Raúl Castro have forced on Cuba during their dictatorships.
The Coalition calls for:
* Full observance by the Cuban government of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and of the Conventions and [...]
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If Cuba legalizes the buying and selling of real estate by the end of the year, as the government has promised, many expect tremendous changes, including higher prices, mass relocations, an increase in property taxes and a flood of money from Cubans abroad, including those in the United States.
Private property is the nucleus of capitalism, so the plan to legitimize it in Cuba, a country of slogans such as “socialism or death,” strikes many Cubans as jaw-dropping, reports the New York Times. Indeed, most people expect onerous regulations and, already, the plan outlined by the state media would suppress the market by limiting Cubans to one home or apartment and requiring full-time residency.
Yet even with state control, experts say, property sales could transform Cuba more than any of the economic changes announced by President Raúl Castro’s government.
Compared with the changes already passed – more self-employment and cellphone ownership – or proposed – car sales and looser emigration rules – “nothing is as big as this,” said Philip Peters, an analyst with the Lexington Institute, a think tank in Arlington, Virginia.
Good Old Days?
The opportunities for profits and loans would [...]
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HAVANA – Though adamant that Cuba is simply fine-tuning socialism, not shifting to capitalism, President Raúl Castro has spearheaded changes that allow Cubans to work for themselves in 178 approved activities, hire employees and rent out rooms and cars. The Cuban leader has said the measures are crucial to rescue the island’s perennially weak economy from the abyss, and he has warned his countrymen that there is no Plan B.
But less than a year into the overhaul, interviews by the Associated Press with Cuban tax authorities, government officials and more than a dozen aspiring new business owners in Havana reveal a darkening landscape for those who took up the free-market challenge. They say they face competitors offering similar products; depend on customers who have little or no disposable income; are cut off from credit or startup capital, and undone by a new tax code they perceive as overly burdensome.
While the government says it has moved boldly to meet these problems, a basic fact of the free market still needs to sink in on this island of 11.2 million people: that most businesses fail, even in developed countries such as the U.S. where startups can [...]
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Despite having released more than 20 journalists imprisoned during a 2003 crackdown, Cuban authorities continue to persecute independent journalists through arrests, beatings and intimidation, according to a new report released by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
In one such case, Juan González Febles, director of the independent news website Primavera Digital, was running an errand last spring when he came upon a news story: Police were climbing onto his neighbors’ roofs in Havana to remove satellite television dishes that the government considers illegal because they pick up uncensored stations from abroad.
“When Febles started taking pictures with his cell phone, officers quickly arrested him and took him to a neighborhood police station, where he was held for seven hours and made to erase all of his photos of the dish seizures, a highly unpopular police activity,” CPJ’s report says. Febles told CPJ that he has become accustomed to detentions, which number in the dozens over the years, but that he is still bothered that his phone is tapped and that he’s followed by security agents in the streets. The agents sometimes stop him, Febles said, and relay what they’ve heard in his private [...]
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Some 60 representatives of organized labor throughout the Americas recently participated in a two day conference in Miami to discuss recent drastic economic measures being imposed on the Cuban people by their Communist government. Also participating were representatives of non-governmental and human rights organizations.
Conference co-sponsors were the Committee for Free Trade Unionism (CFTU) and the International Group for Corporate Social Responsibility in Cuba (GIRSCC).
The conference attracted trade unionists from the United States, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, and El Salvador.
Speakers included Hernán Yanez, Ph.D., a scholar who has written extensively on governance and democracy, civil-military relations and transnational civil society; José Azel, a Cuban exile and currently a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at the University of Miami; Dr. Orlando Gutiérrez, Directorio Democrático Cubano; Ileana Fuentes, Executive Director of the Red Feminista Cubana, based in Miami, and ILO Expert and noted historian on Cuban labor, Professor Efrén Córdova of Florida International University.
Conference presenters Carmelo Díaz, Roberto de Miranda, Pedro Pablo Alvarez Ramos, and Joel Brito.
Situation Dire
Leaders of major Cuban independent labor confederations now living in [...]
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CFTU Updates
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The Passing of Bill Doherty
Bill Doherty, 84, Executive Director of the American Institute for Free Labor Development, AFL-CIO
William Charles “Bill” Doherty Jr., who led the AFL-CIO’s outreach to trade unions in Latin America for 35 years, died August 28 after a long battle with bone marrow cancer. He was 84.
Born in Belleview, Ky., the oldest of nine children, Doherty was raised in the Washington, D.C. area where his father, William Charles Doherty Sr. was president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, and later the first U.S. ambassador to Jamaica. He graduated from St. Paul’s Catholic Academy High School, where he met his future wife, Jane Catherine Donovan, a Boston native. He worked as a Capitol Hill police officer while completing his degree in philosophy at Catholic University of America, where he played defensive lineman for the football team. He also attended Georgetown University School of Linguistics and Georgetown Law School.
Doherty’s life was defined by his Catholic faith (he spent a brief period of his life in the St. Charles Seminary, studying to be a priest) and his conviction that democratic trade unions held the key to freedom and prosperity around the world. His work with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), the Postal Telephone and Telegraph International (PTTI) and the AFL-CIO’s American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), took him to 129 countries over his career.
After serving as an aerial photographer with the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, Doherty assisted in rebuilding the trade union movement in Germany, supporting the anti-Nazi, dissident labor leaders and nascent democratic trade union movement that is today known as the Confederation of German Trade Unions (Deutscher Gewerteschaftsbund, DGB). He served in Belgium, Europe and Latin America as an AFL-CIO representative to the PTTI, an international trade secretariat.
When President John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress was initiated in 1961 to support labor’s international role in nurturing democratic trade union movements abroad, Doherty was the logical choice to serve as AIFLD’s Director of Social Projects, and later as Executive Director. He led the AIFLD under the direction of four AFL-CIO presidents, retiring in 1996.
Survivors include his wife of 52 years, Jane Catherine Donovan, eight children and 25 grandchildren.
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The CFTU Website
Welcome to the CFTU website!
We’ve designed it to keep you better informed about developments in the continuing struggle of workers everywhere to establish and maintain the right of Freedom of Association – the right to form and join unions of their own choosing, run by people they elect.
The CFTU has been active in recent years in attempts to assist workers in Cuba struggling to assert that right – in the face of their government’s insistence that only one union, guided by the Communist Party, can represent them, and against the background of continuing imprisonment and harassment of those who think otherwise.
Cuba is not the only country in the world denying workers their rights. Sadly the list is long – Burma, Vietnam, North Korea, China - to cite a few. But too many trade unionists in the free world are unwilling to speak out, apparently believing that somehow these regimes will transform themselves into democratic societies and that through contact with free world unions, the non-representative unions in those police states will remake themselves into legitimate unions. Such a belief flies in the face of 90 years of experience to the contrary.
The recent hunger-strike death in a Cuban prison of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a 42-year old brick mason serving a 26-year sentence for his political activities, and the long hunger strike of dissident journalist Guillermo Farinas, provide eloquent testimony to the determination of those heroes to see their country free and democratic and observant of all the rights of free people.
Our committee believes that neither dictatorships nor their hand-maiden unions ever yield power willingly and that free trade unions must not be complicit in the denial of freedom of association to workers. Rather, we believe that those who are joined in the struggle to assert workers’ rights in the face of dictators, those who risk imprisonment and harassment, need and deserve our moral and material support. We hope you will join us in those struggles.
Tom Donahue, CFTU Chair
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International News
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New Union Confederation Established in Tunisia
Tunisians recently formed a new trade union organization, called the Tunisian General Labor Federation (CGTT), to help improve
relations between unions, fight unemployment and exclusion, and establish unemployment benefits.
The CGTT held a constituent congress in the coastal city of Nabeul, and named Habid Guiza its general secretary. The new organization claims to represent 30,000 members.
CGTT aims to contribute to the development of trade unionism in Tunisia, Guiza said, and to provide workers with the freedom to choose their union.
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Fiji Government Defends Trade Union Shut-Out
The Fijian government has defended its decision to refuse a delegation of Australian and New Zealand trade unionists entry to the country.
The four delegates had planned a three day visit to investigate allegations of human and labor rights breaches by the Bainimarama government.
But when the group, including Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) president Ged Kearney, arrived at the Nadi International Airport, they were refused entry and put on the next flight to Sydney.
Fiji Attorney-General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum said the delegation’s visit was ‘well-orchestrated’ and ‘irresponsible’.
He said the ACTU had a preconceived position and planned to move a resolution at the Australian Labor Party Conference to place Fiji on the same blacklist as Burma and Zimbabwe.
‘Even before visiting Fiji, the ACTU had taken a position,’ the Fijian government said in a statement.
Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd said it was concerning that consular access was denied the group, and that Australia had an ongoing commitment to promoting labor and human rights and ensuring that trade unionists remained free from intimidation.
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U.S. Clothing Companies: ‘Labor Abuses at Chinese Factory’
Six American clothing companies, including American Eagle and Gap, have confirmed the results of a China Labor Watch (CLW) investigation that uncovered violations of Chinese labor laws
at a factory that supplies garments and accessories sold in the United States and elsewhere. The factory is part of the Jiangsu Ningbo Hesheng Headwear Company.
According to the investigation, the factory’s working conditions expose employees to high temperatures and toxic gases, workers regularly work more than 12 hours a day, workers work 30 days straight without a break during the busy season, and the base salary for workers is significantly lower than the legal minimum wage of Cixi County, where the factory is located.
American Eagle, GAP, J. Crew, Liz Claiborne, Talbots and Target responded to CLW’s report by conducting their own investigation. In November, they acknowledged the poor working conditions at the factory and said they would compel management there to provide a safer and fairer work environment.
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Italy risks ’social explosion’ over austerity
Italy risks a “social explosion” over the government’s austerity measures and unions plan more protests against them, the head of the country’s largest labor federation CGIL says.
CGIL leader Susanna Camusso said Prime Minister Mario Monti’s government was “deeply conditioned” by its need for support from the party of his predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi, and its austerity plan spared the rich and demanded excessive sacrifices from ordinary Italians.
“We see every risk of a social explosion,” Camusso said in an interview with Reuters, warning that anger was rising over a pension reform she said was unnecessary, measures that cut already weak purchasing power and a worsening labor market.
CGIL and the two smaller unions, CISL and UIL, are holding a series of strikes to protest against the 33 billion euro plan that aims to shore up public finances and combat Italy’s debt crisis.
Camusso, the first woman leader in the CGIL’s 105-year history, acknowledged that Monti had made some concessions to union demands by reducing cuts to low pensions and slightly easing a housing tax, but this did not go far enough.
“It would be absolutely excessive to say we are satisfied; the solutions are insufficient,” she said, announcing that the CGIL and its partner unions planned a national street demonstration. More than half of the CGIL’s 6 million members are pensioners.
Speaking in her office in central Rome, 56-year-old Camusso tried to strike a balance between accepting the need for tough measures to solve the debt crisis and an insistence that the steps adopted were unfair.
“We are flexible in the face of the emergency but we are not willing to accept everything,” she said. “You can’t ride roughshod over people.”
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18 Killed in Malawi Protests
In late July, authorities in Malawi perpetrated a round of violence that resulted in the deaths of 18 people involved in peaceful protests.
The International Trade Union Confederation has written to the president of Malawi to strongly protest the bloody repression of peaceful protests.
Malawi’s trade unions have been critical of a number of recent laws which limit the freedom of the press, restrict lawsuits against government agencies and officers, and limit civil liberties. Under the current situation, the Malawian police can search any house without a search warrant, and the press cannot publish anything which is “deemed to be contrary to the public interest.”
Protestors also wanted to point out the quickly deteriorating economic conditions in their country, characterized by crippling fuel and foreign exchange shortages. The workers of Malawi have been hit hard by the economic crisis. Shortage of foreign exchange means that companies cannot bring in raw materials and parts, which has resulted in massive job losses. Shortages cause basic goods to become unaffordable.
“This is not worthy of a country which adheres to the principles of democracy,” said ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow. “Confronted with such particularly harsh conditions as the ones currently hitting Malawi, citizens and civil society organizations should not face even tougher repression when standing up for their basic rights.”
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More Women Workers Killed in Guatemala
Guatemala City – Delegates to the II Conference against Impunity in Guatemala, convened by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and its Guatemalan affiliates, have condemned the killings of two women who were fighting for the rights of the Guatemalan people.
Lesbia Elías Xurup, a member of Comunidades en Resistencia contra Unión FENOSA, fighting against energy group abuses, was hacked to death by machetes at her home in Comunidad de La Selva, Santo Domingo, Suchitepéquez, on 21 July. The assassins, not content with killing her, chopped off one of her hands.
María Santos Mejía, secretary of the independent maquilas union Sindicato de Maquilas Independientes, was shot in the head several times by assailants on a motorbike. She leaves her four children and four-month-old baby.
In a letter, the ITUC urged Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom to take every step necessary to bring an end to the “constant murders and violations of the rights of working people. It is essential that the Guatemalan government take urgent measures to guarantee the full exercise of human, labour and trade union rights in the country and to end the murders of trade unionists and women trade unionists.”
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Guatemalan Trade Unionist Murdered
Lorenzo Godoy Asencio, general secretary of the tricycle taxi drivers union and the local transport workers union in Guatemala, was murdered in early May.
The trade unionist disappeared on May 2nd with his moto-taxi; he had left the house to buy bread for dinner. When he failed to return, a search was launched the following day in the area bordering El Salvador. His body was found on May 5th in Aldea Los Angeles, showing stab wounds thought to have been inflicted with a screwdriver. This murder has once again plunged into mourning the workers of Guatemala.
The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), in a letter to the president of Guatemala, called for a full and immediate investigation to ensure that those responsible for this crime are brought to justice without delay and punished with the full force of the law.
ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow, appalled by the repeated murders of trade unionists in Guatemala, underlined: “This new murder must not go unpunished, as, unfortunately, have all the other murders carried out against trade unionists in Guatemala thus far. It is essential that the government react by strengthening the rule of law and ensuring respect for the fundamental rights enshrined in the ILO Conventions ratified by Guatemala.”
The serious and constant violations of ILO Convention 87 in Guatemala will be examined by the ILO Committee on the Application of Standards during the International Labor Conference in June.
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Hope for Democracy Builds as Dictators Fall
 The recent events in Tunisia and Egypt that resulted in the departures of long-time dictators Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak have raised hopes that reasonable democracies will flourish and spread throughout the Arab and Muslim Middle East.
Governments that work for all the people instead of just the very wealthy or “the connected” are long overdue. All who appreciate freedom can only applaud what has taken place so far. Ali Abdullah Saleh, president of Yemen, will no longer push for his son, Ahmed, to take his place. King Abdullah of Jordan replaced his government in order to shore up his regime. Hopefully, the dictator Muammar Qaddafi of Libya will not be able to pass the government there onto his sons.
Workers and labor unions in the Middle East, as elsewhere, have played a role in the fight for democracy in Tunisia and Egypt. Who can forget Solidarność, the independent trade union federation, that helped topple the Communist regime in Poland?
Newly democratic nations in the Middle East, if they are truly democratic, will encourage the development and expansion of free, democratic, independent trade unions that represent the workers in those countries. Trade unions exist to help workers better their lives and the lives of their families with improved wages, benefits, safer working conditions, and representation, precisely what is needed most to build and sustain a true democracy.
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Calls for Halt to Trade Union Rights Violations
MOSCOW – At a recent ITUC conference here, the International Metalworkers Federation (IMF) affiliates joined the Newly Independent States (NIS) in their demands that the governments and employers in Russia and in the newly independent former Soviet states respect fundamental rights guaranteed by ILO Conventions.
The demands were voiced at the conclusion of the International Confederation of Trade Unions Conference, “Building Democracy and Trade Union Rights in the NIS,” held here last December.
“We have the situation when in the countries with about 200 million able-bodied population, the real security of workers approaches to zero,” reads the final document adopted by the delegates.
The large conference was attended by union leaders and activists from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine, as well as representatives of the ITUC and its Pan-European Regional Council (PERC), European trade unions and global union federations, including the IMF, NGOs, academics, trade unionists and journalists.
The nature of violations differ: in Russia, trade union leaflets were added to the list of “extremist materials”; in Belarus, the system of annual contracts is used as a tool of anti-union discrimination; in Georgia, a truncated Labor Code is introduced, which contains only 55 articles and virtually no guarantees of legal protection of trade unions. Employers and the governments violate the fundamental right of workers to freedom of association as guaranteed by ILO Conventions.
Officials from different Russian government agencies attended the conference, including the Ministry of Healthcare, Ministry of Justice, and General Procurator’s Office. This created the possibility of a direct and sharp dialogue between trade unionists and government representatives. Andrei Isaev, Chairman of the Duma Committee on Labor and Social Policy, spoke about the legislative work regarding labor relations.
About 15 activists of the primary union organizations from across the region spoke of pressure exerted on them by employers and authorities. Behind each of the short reports was a history of several months and sometimes years of struggle, persecution, unlawful dismissals, discrimination, and fierce resistance.
The final document adopted by the representatives of trade unions calls for strengthening trade union solidarity, to conduct educational work, to build strong trade unions, and to hold national and international campaigns for the protection and development of trade union rights.
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Free Trade Unionism Nixed in Much of Middle East
In the West, we take for granted what we have, and what others fought for, including eight hour working days, paid holidays, and much more, so it is reasonable to ask about working conditions in other parts of the world. The Middle East, with its untold wealth and resources, is a good place to start.
Despite a massive population, maybe as many as 300 million, we hear little of the situation of ordinary people and workers in the Middle East.
Not surprisingly, trade unions and trade unionists have many difficulties in most of the Middle East, their legal rights are often nonexistent, and they are persecuted, attacked and even assassinated.
More often than not, ordinary people in the Middle East don’t even have the basic right to join a free trade union, or defend their working conditions, let alone strike.
The picture of workers’ rights in the Middle East is frequently bleak, as a report in the International Trade Union Confederation 2009 survey relates:
In Palestine and Lebanon, political tensions and violence have a negative impact on trade union activities. The offices of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, and some of the houses of its members, were destroyed by bombs. In Lebanon, the government called out the army after a general strike was called in May. Changes in legislation have continued, but rather slowly. Read more >>
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