What is a country without its working masses, without the workers who bear responsibility for production and services? In line with this, we cannot strip away the echo of the voices from the 22nd Congress of the CTC.
An experienced trade unionist emphasized the importance of the leaders who guide each organization, starting from the union sections. In her view, they are indispensable leaders in driving change, strengthening unity, balancing the work system, and, above all, ensuring constant preparation.
Reaching workers, reaching unions, engaging every union section, talking, persuading, and ensuring that those who take on roles in the collectives are exemplary — those who inspire, those who, by taking the first step, are followed by many or all — is a priority, she explained.
This is the same Revolution and the same working class that thundered with change since the beginnings of 1959; however, the context has indeed changed. The economic scenario imposes new ways of projecting ourselves and finding solutions.
More and more, these times demand that there be no rigid rules. We lose our way when we narrowly focus on whether workers are state-employed or not. We are all Cubans, rising each morning to work for our people, as another delegate’s voice at the workers’ congress put it.
Examples of what and how things are done came to the congress stage in different forms. Some more modest, all altruistic, but all carried the protagonism of Cuban workers. And if we note down in black and white what must be transformed in the labor collectives — what still lags behind — then it will have been worthwhile.
Everyone should have taken home a sample of the revitalization of a trade union movement that cannot stop if saving the Homeland is at stake.
There are no formulas, but we can gather the experiences of a country and all participate by adjusting the tone. Because if anything was made clear, it is that the model we need to revive has unity as its genuine aspiration.
Days after the great event, the imperative is not to forget the debt — the debt that remains of contributing with great spirit, without the right to give up, with the awareness that we must renew our ways of doing and place the union at the center.
On our individual agendas we have notes, multiple ideas, skills, and trades to change the ways of interacting in union sections. Let’s do it! Let’s project ourselves into the community with an injection of workers’ optimism.
As Osnay Miguel Colina Rodríguez, Secretary General of the CTC, said at the 22nd Congress: “We must defend Cuba by doing. And there is no time to lose!”
