Message from Cuba to Participants at the First Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility in Cuba
Cuba's Independent Labor Movement greets all the participants at the first Conference on Corporate Social Responsibility in Cuba. We hope and pray that during the debates that follow you shall discuss the violations of the social and labor rights and the right to organize inflicted upon workers in our country by foreign investment concerns. We hope that you will discuss the violations inflicted upon all workers around the world.
We also extend a fraternal greeting to our organized labor and union brethren from Latin America and to the representatives of NGOs who are attending this conference. We commend you for actively defending the rights of workers everywhere.
On behalf of Confederación Obrera Nacional Independiente de Cuba and all its labor unions; on behalf of Centro Nacional de Capacitación Sindical y Laboral; Lux Info Press [Labor] Agency; Instituto de Investigaciones Sociolaborales y Sindicales; and on behalf of all the independent labor movements inside Cuba, we wish you every success possible as you deliberate on how to improve the living conditions of all workers.
We would like to take the opportunity of this forum to address the following letter to foreign investors doing business in Cuba.
To Foreign Investors with Business Interests in Cuba:
Having taken into consideration the growing deterioration of even the most basic regard for the social and labor rights and the right to organize of Cuban workers in our country, Cuba's independent labor movement once again calls upon you, the community of investors and shareholders with interests in Cuba, to put an end to your complicity in enforcing labor practices and standards that adversely affect the working class in our country.
Since we are apprised of the fact that within the Freedom to Organize Committee of the International Labor Organization, Cuban authorities continue to be reminded of their repeated violations of ILO Conventions, we wish to make the following recommendations:
First: That the presence of foreign investors and shareholders in Cuba not contribute to violations of Convention 87 on Labor Freedom and Protection of the Right to Organize. To accomplish this, said concerns must allow Cuban workers to exercise those rights in foreign company proper, and avoid complicity with the Cuban government in committing such violations by caving in to the regime's intransigence on the matter.
Second: That said concerns hire workers directly, without the government's employment agency, or the official workers' union, the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC) serving as compulsory middleman; that said concerns allow workers the benefits contemplated in ILO Convention 98 on the Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining, not the least of which is that employers shall not interfere with the affairs of labor organizations.
Third: To respect Convention 95 on Protection of Wages, that forbids employers from restricting workers' freedom to use their wages as they see fit. Such interference has long been systematic in Cuba.
Fourth: To prevent all discriminatory or exclusive practices against workers employed by foreign companies, on the basis of race, color, sex, religion or political ideas, the latter being at the root of the most flagrant violations committed against workers rights in our country.
Fifth: To contribute to the improvement of the quality of life of workers, both in the work place and outside company proper, in such areas as working conditions and safety; environmental hygiene/guarding against health hazards; environmental protection; work schedule/hours; wages; and periodic vacations. This is a fundamental demand of every civic project that advocates for respect of human rights in Cuba.
Sixth: To uphold in each foreign company that operates in Cuba the same basic principles concerning the social and labor rights and the right to organize of workers that are upheld in the company's country of origin, so long as they meet established practice and the Conventions of the ILO.
Having been made aware of the fact that, although foreign investments have benefited many workers in the tourism sector, nonetheless they have also helped to buttress the present regime, increase social and labor discrimination, and enriched the investor as a result of his complicity with the application of discriminatory practices inherent to the Cuban labor system, we suggest that said investors take the following steps in the immediate future:
A) Investors should not desist from investing in Cuba, but in doing so they should abide by international labor norms and take into consideration the disadvantages that Cuban workers endure, subject as they are to a single employer, namely the government, that demands unconditional political loyalty in exchange for meager benefits that come by way of humiliating limitations.
B) Investors should refrain from complicity, either direct or by omission, with actions that violate the social and labor rights and the right to organize of any worker or labor group within the foreign companies that operate in Cuba. For a long time complicity has been the norm, in spite of the many demand made by independent labor activists and the recommendations made by the Committee on Labor Freedom of the ILO.
C) Investors should acknowledge that the ILO demands the release of seven independent labor activists who were sentenced to prison terms ranging between 16 and 27 years for the sole "crime" of defending the very social and labor rights and the right to organize that today we ask you to honor.
Taking into consideration that a review of Case 2258 at the ILO proved that the Cuban government violates the fundamental Conventions of that organization, we advise you that should those violations persist, the Independent Labor Movement of Cuba, together with other organizations that make up an alternative civil society to the official government organizations, shall exercise its rights, once democracy is established in our country, to take legal action against said foreign investors for damages inflicted upon the Cuban Labor Movement and our nation's labor patrimony.
Dated La Habana, March 30th 2005.