Cargando...The year 2025 marked a decisive turning point for the Cuban trade union movement, not only because of its course during those 12 months, but also due to the accumulated effect of pressures that impacted workers and their families.
In the midst of a complex economic scenario, marked by productive tensions, material limitations, and structural transformations in employment, the working class had to demonstrate its capacity for resistance, organization, and social leadership.
It was not an easy year, but it was a time of collective learning and reaffirmation in the face of events such as the postponement of the 22nd Congress of the CTC to 2026, incomplete staffing of leadership positions, and the non-incorporation of employees in non-state sectors into the trade union organization.
Even so, from factories to hospitals, from agricultural fields to classrooms, unions accompanied every adjustment process, seeking to preserve rights, sustain production, and strengthen the ethical commitment to work.
The defense of real wages and the maintenance of essential services became banners upheld through daily effort, often under adverse conditions, to represent the entire labor force.
2025 also left a clear lesson: Cuban trade unionism continues to be an indispensable actor in the country’s economic governance and a principal factor in the class struggle in a world where the fundamental contradiction remains capital versus labor.
Faced with the expansion of self-employment, the incorporation of new technologies, and the diversification of productive forms, the labor movement managed to reinvent itself in an adverse scenario shaped by economic warfare.
It has also had to confront another war, already alluded to by José Martí: the war against thought, a terrain where much remains to be faced, because bourgeois ideologues have never accepted that workers organize and unite.
The CTC and the unions did not limit themselves to making demands; they also proposed, managed, and mobilized wills in defense of labor justice and national development, hindered by distortions and an economy moving at too slow a pace.
Looking ahead to 2026, the greatest challenge lies in deepening youth participation, expanding female representation, and giving them space in leadership structures, as well as updating mechanisms of collective bargaining.
Equally important for representing both state and non-state workers will be maintaining transparent, lasting, and systematic communication with the grassroots, which remain the main source of legitimacy and strength for the movement.
Beyond statistics, the spirit of Cuban trade unionism resides in its vocation for service and in the confidence that the country is built with the strength of those who work.
The new year opens another stage of challenges, but also of hopes. If 2025 made anything clear, it is that Cuban workers do not stop in the face of obstacles; they transform them into reasons to keep moving forward.
Acerca del autor
Licenciado en Periodismo y licenciado en Ciencias Sociales, autor de El Foro en Cubahora, jubilado y reincorporado en la Redacción Digital de Trabajadores, donde escribe las secciones LA GUAGUA y EN 500 CARACTERES, fue corresponsal del periódico Vanguardia en tres de las seis regiones de Las Villas, Jefe de Redacción fundador del periódico Escambray, Corresponsal Jefe de la Agencia de Información Nacional (actual ACN) en Sancti Spiritus, colaborador de Radio Progreso, Prensa Latina y Radio Sancti Spíritus; así como Jefe de Información, Subdirector y Director del periódico Vanguardia, donde administró sus foros de discusión.
