Читать книгу A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution - Stephen Cushion - Страница 11

3. THE EMPLOYERS’ OFFENSIVE

The year 1955 was a crucial turning point in the developing history of the Cuban Revolution. Up to this point, the Batista government had not tried very hard to enforce its productivity agenda, and the mujalista bureaucracy had generally maintained its control of the union structures, with few examples of serious industrial action. This all changed during 1955, with important disputes in several key industries. These would have long-term effects on the relationship between organized labor and the regime, as well as profoundly changing the balance of forces within the working-class movement.

At the end of 1954, the Batista government had two pressing industrial problems on its agenda. The falling price of sugar meant that the industry’s employers were demanding wage and job cuts. They were particularly insistent as their demands for such cuts the previous year had been largely ignored pending the elections.¹ Additionally, financial problems in the U.S.-owned Ferrocarriles Consolidados (FFCC Consolidados), the railway company that operated the network in the eastern end of the island, meant that its owners also wished to cut their wage costs and staff numbers.² The government’s confrontations with the workers in these two powerful industrial sectors, as well as with some other important groups of workers, made 1955 an important turning point in the history of labor mobilization in Cuba. The outcomes of these disputes were different in each industry, and the political trajectory of the leading protagonists was correspondingly different. The degree to which each group of workers were successful or not in their aims helped determine whether the politics of the PSP or the MR-26-7 would come to dominate the anti-Batista opposition in different industries and regions.

If the role of workers in the Cuban insurrection has been overlooked, the role of women workers has disappeared completely from view. When we speak of workers confronting the government and their employers, it is important to recognize that women frequently played an important role. The importance of working-class women in day-to-day labor struggles, and in the final triumph of the revolution, will be referred to frequently in this and succeeding chapters. An examination of contemporary sources, particularly photographs, demonstrates the significance of women both as workers themselves and as family members of workers in struggle: women railway office workers, bank workers, and shop assistants, as well as the solidarity provided by the wives and families of sugar and port workers. Two examples of this that are better documented, the office workers of Camagüey and the sugar workers of Delicias y Chaparra, serve as an illustration of women’s wider involvement.

The account of the events of 1955 can be given sector by sector with only minimal disruption of the chronological sequence, because the government was careful to avoid a generalized confrontation and therefore engineered disputes in one industry at a time, beginning with the Cuban transport industry, continuing with the bank workers’ dispute, then a number of single-enterprise strikes in industries such as brewing and textiles before getting to the sugar workers’ strike. This sugar workers’ strike not only involved half a million workers in the island’s major industry, it also involved student activists, thus forming a link that would have a significant impact on the developing revolutionary situation. From this account, it emerges that the failure of these strikes at the hands of a repressive state and a corrupt trade union bureaucracy led a significant group of militant class-conscious workers to seek a different approach to the defense of their economic interests. To present a rounded picture, it is also necessary to address the apparent success of the port and tobacco workers in resisting the employers’ offensive when, all around, their compatriots were suffering defeat after defeat. Reflecting on why the employers’ productivity offensive was successful in some industries and not in others is key to understanding the later political development of different industrial sectors within the labor movement.

Batista planned his attack on working conditions carefully. He had reached an accommodation with the CTC but could not move too quickly because, if he undermined Mujal’s base, that accommodation would be useless. Moreover, Mujal was accustomed to influencing government policy to a greater extent than would have suited Batista, and the new dictator took a little time to subordinate Mujal to his project. We shall see how Mujal’s relationship with the government changed over time and how he became increasingly identified with the regime. Having established a good relationship with the CTC leadership, Batista adopted an approach that would be reprised thirty years later by the Thatcher government in Britain using an approach that became known as the Ridley Plan: an attempt to restore profitability by defeating workers sector by sector, making sure that the field of battle is always chosen by the government and that any chance of generalized and united industrial action is avoided.³ Once the government had decided that the time was right to confront a particular group of workers, it acted with considerable brutality to overcome resistance. Nevertheless, the government did not always win, and particularities of each sector will be examined below along with the political conclusions each group of workers drew from their victory or defeat.

Public Transport

The first significant confrontation between the Batista government and organized labor came in the transport industry. The Cuban railways were suffering from a particularly severe crisis as a result of years of underinvestment, though transport workers were well organized and had maintained a significant level of independence, particularly in Oriente Province at the eastern end of the island. The disputes in the transport industry in 1955 signify the first real defeat suffered by organized workers at the hands of the government and employers. The government managed the conflict so that the railway workers were not given reason to go on strike until after the sugar harvest was in, thereby denying them the opportunity to make common cause with the sugar workers, with whom they had traditional relationships of solidarity. The railway companies also had substantial holdings in the bus industry, which had led to links between the workers’ organizations in both industries. It also meant that cost-saving measures would be applied on the buses as well the railway. It was in the bus industry that the new de facto government made its first attack on the labor movement, relatively quickly after the coup.

In July 1952, with no warning, one of Havana’s two bus companies was placed under military control; the leader of the union, Marco Hirigoyen, was arrested; and 600 out of the company’s 6,000 drivers were dismissed.⁴ This served the double purpose of removing one of Mujal’s internal enemies in the CTC and weakening one of the most militant groups of workers in the capital, thereby reinforcing Mujal’s sense that his future lay with the regime.⁵ Such decisive action by the government also served to impress upon both the business community and foreign observers that Batista was serious in his intention to confront organized labor.⁶ The British ambassador, wrote that Autobuses Modernos, one of the two bus-operating companies in Havana, “had from the point of view of graft, rank inefficiency and financial loss become a crying scandal.” He went on to “report this incident as an example of what can be achieved in Cuba by a strong man who is fearless of intimidation and is bent on cleansing public services of gangster and surplus elements. It is to be hoped that similar action, if required, will be taken at the appropriate moment to place the United Railways on an economic basis.”⁷

The United Railways to which he refers, called Ferrocarriles Unidos (FFCC Unidos) in Cuba, was the railway company that operated services in the western half of the island. It had a majority of British shareholders and was practically bankrupt. The British owners had been trying to extract themselves and their remaining capital from the company for some time, a fact that gave the British embassy another reason to look kindly on the new Batista government: “The existence of a strong Government in Cuba greatly improves the chances of a settlement of the United Railways claim, which has been made more difficult by the attitude of organized labor in Cuba.”⁸

Railways had developed early in Cuba, initially as a freight network that linked the sites of sugar production to ports on the coast; a passenger network uniting the major centers of population on the island was a later development. This association between sugar and railways was reflected in a history of solidarity between railway workers, dockers, and sugar workers that dates back to the beginning of the twentieth century.⁹ The main railway trade union, the Hermandad Ferroviaria (Railway Brotherhood) had a socially conservative leadership that had close ties to the American Federation of Labor (AFL), but this attitude was far from universal within the organization and the local organizations, known as delegaciones, could be remarkably militant, particularly in the east of the island.¹⁰ By the middle of the century, the network was divided between two companies, the British-owned Ferrocarriles Unidos which operated in the west of the country and the U.S.-owned Ferrocarriles Consolidados in the east. Both companies were in financial difficulties, but FFCC Unidos seemed to be in permanent decline.

The FFCC Unidos network infrastructure had badly deteriorated and was in need of massive capital investment. The report and accounts for 1948–49 painted a catastrophic picture of a bankrupt enterprise, operating under government supervision and kept alive by subsidies. The falling price of sugar, to which freight rates were linked, as well as the smaller crop led to revenue from sugar decreasing by over one million dollars. The chairman complained that “the principal difficulty has been the refusal of the labor unions … to permit the company to institute essential economies involving reduction of wages, dismissal of redundant staff and elimination of redundant services.”¹¹ This led the writers of the Truslow Report to conclude that the wages and conditions of the workers could no longer be sustained at existing levels and were an obstacle to further investment.¹² In September 1949, FFCC Unidos finally managed to impose 800 job losses and had reduced wages to pre-1945 levels.¹³ By means of this cut, and with the help of a government subsidy of $100,000 a month,¹⁴ the company was able to stagger on until 1952 when, with mounting debts, it sought further layoffs and early retirements. The new Batista government approved a plan, known after its author Luis Chiappy, whereby the government took a 51 percent stake and negotiated a loan from the Bank of America and the Hanover Bank to settle accounts with the British stakeholders.¹⁵ Gustavo Pellón, chairman of FFCC Consolidados, the U.S. railway company, was named as the interventor (government-appointed administrator) and thereby took control without any financial liability.

In addition to taking action aimed at resolving the company’s immediate financial future, the government announced its intention of imposing the job losses outlined in the Chiappy Plan. The workers, having been disappointed by the response of their trade union in 1949, set up a rank-and-file–based comité de lucha (strike committee) that called a strike at the end of June 1953.¹⁶ The government responded with military intervention and decreed that all who did not return to work immediately would be dismissed. Javier Bolaños, national president of the Hermandad Ferroviaria, ordered a return to work saying that he would do everything necessary to ensure that the reduction in staff would be “strictly limited to the numbers that the company required.”¹⁷ On July 26, an armed group led by Fidel Castro attacked the Moncada Barracks in Santiago and, under cover of the resulting repression, the authorities managed to enforce the return-to-work order and forced further layoffs in August. There is no surviving evidence of workers’ reaction to the Moncada attack; we have already seen the hostile reaction of the PSP.¹⁸ and it is likely that the outcome did not predispose the railway workers to support Castro. Its victory over the FFCC Unidos workers left the government free to deal with the problems of FFCC Consolidados. However, before doing so, Batista managed to improve his position through the elections he called for November 1954. Despite a high level of fraud and the withdrawal at the last minute of his only rival, these elections gave the government a certain level of legitimacy, at least in the eyes of international diplomacy, with the British ambassador describing Batista as “the type of president best suited to the country.”¹⁹ Once the 1954 elections were out of the way, the regime felt free to address the industrial issues confronting it, starting with the railways.

The financial problems of the Ferrocarriles Consolidados, though nowhere near as great as those of FFCC Unidos, were far from insignificant, with annual losses averaging $2.5 million. From the start of the economic downturn that resulted from the drop in sugar prices in 1953, the owners had been proposing wage cuts based on the government’s decree number 1155, which gave the company the right to set wages according to the economic situation. The company was faced by a trade union organization with a long tradition of militancy and its proposals were met with an outcry from the workers, which forced a delay that was financed by a government loan.²⁰ Immediately following the November 1954 elections, FFCC Consolidados announced 1,550 redundancies and a 20 percent wage cut to be implemented from December 1, 1954.²¹ The office workers in Camagüey, mainly women, were the first to receive the news as they would have to administer the cuts. They immediately walked out on strike. Some went down to the depot and the workshop, where their action was swiftly joined by the drivers and engineers. Others produced leaflets and posters and took to the streets of Camagüey in an impromptu demonstration, which received considerable support in a town that relied on the railway yards for much of its prosperity.²² The wage cuts and redundancies were aimed mainly at the operating staff, and so the actions of the administrative workers demonstrate a high level of principled solidarity, although it is also likely that they would find family and friends among the workers under attack. As word spread, the action soon extended to the rest of the region, with a large street demonstration bringing the center of Guantánamo to a standstill.²³ The following day, the workers reported for work but initiated a paso de jicotea,²⁴ a work slowdown that caused widespread disruption to the service.²⁵ Taken aback by the level of resistance, the government declared a truce, suspended the cuts, set up a commission of inquiry with trade union and employer representation, and gave the company a further loan.²⁶

FFCC Consolidados also owned four bus companies operating in Santiago de Cuba: La Cubana, La Cubanita, La Criolla, and La Mambisa. It tried to use the period of the truce to impose cost-saving measures by locking out the workers in these companies. Many of their colleagues in the other two bus companies in the city withdrew their labor in solidarity; the strike in La Oriental was solid, but only partial on Autobuses Modelos. The army started rounding up drivers and forcing them to take out their buses. In protest, a number of drivers occupied their local union offices and started a hunger strike but were soon evicted by the police. The police intervention was said to be at the request of Prisciliano Falcón, a leading mujalista official in Santiago. The hunger strike then moved to the offices of Delegación 12 of the railway union and continued for seventy-two hours, after which the company backed down, the lockout was suspended, and arrears of salary were paid.²⁷

The company also used the railway truce for an extensive press campaign, which consisted of newspaper advertisements, press statements, and carefully placed interviews that argued that railway workers were being paid for hours they did not work and that wages had risen much faster than receipts.²⁸ One advertisement asserted that for every peso of income, the company expended one peso and 23 cents, of which 91 cents was in wage costs. In particular, the company complained that it was not benefiting from its modernization program, giving the example that it only took ten hours to get from Santa Clara to Santiago, but the crews were still paid for the twenty hours it had taken before the company had invested shareholders’ money for infrastructure improvements.²⁹ In this last argument, we see encapsulated the employers’ position on productivity: having invested money for technological improvements, they expected their wage bill to decrease. However, with little prospect of other jobs, the majority of the workers saw no reason why they should have their staffing levels or pay reduced in order to maintain or increase profit margins, a classic dispute about who should benefit from technological progress. There was little room for compromise between these two entrenched positions.

The railway workers were not idle during the truce period either, setting up a Comisión de Propaganda y Finanzas (Finance and Propaganda Committee) to coordinate the resistance. This body organized some short strikes in the Guantánamo region.³⁰ Having access to typewriters and duplicating machines, as well as the skills to use them, the women in the administration took a significant role in the production of propaganda material. When the truce ended on January 20, the company announced that it would withhold 35 to 40 percent of the workers’ wages, suspend paid holidays, and make other similar economy measures.³¹ As soon as the announcement was made, the Camagüey office workers again demonstrated, loudly proclaiming that they would not implement the cuts.³² Despite government intervention to postpone the problem again, a move greeted as a victory by the CTC bureaucracy, the rail workers themselves did not trust the government and walked out on February 3.³³ The strike spread throughout the network, with many violent confrontations between the police, army, and striking workers, along with extensive solidarity actions by workers in other trades. Carta Semanal reports that in Morón, local bus and taxi drivers went on solidarity strike and a women’s support group was set up in the town.³⁴ A large number of neighborhood support networks were set up by the female relatives of railwaymen, helped by the women from the offices, similar to the women’s support groups of the British miners’ strike of 1984–85. Women’s groups would also be set up by the relatives of dockers and sugar workers during their own strikes later the same year. These actions by women were frequently a force for unity among workers of different trades as the women’s groups were usually based in the areas where they lived and were able to use their positions in the neighborhood to build links of solidarity.

Many of the ports were also owned by the railway companies and dockers in Boquerón and Nuevitas struck in support of their railway colleagues, as a result of which 58,000 sacks of sugar lay idle on the dock.³⁵ Other port workers in Matanzas, Caimanera, and Manzanillo took advantage of the opportunity to publicly demonstrate both in support of the railway workers and to express their own opposition to bulk loading of sugar.³⁶ It should be remembered that the port workers had a very good practical reason for their solidarity as they recognized that they might need railway support later in their battle to reject a series of productivity measures with which their own industry was threatened. The most public demonstrations of solidarity took place in Camagüey where the CTC Federación Provincial (Provincial Federation) discussed the possibility of a general strike, while many workers independently took part in ten-minute solidarity strikes. All this activity resulted in numerous arrests, in response to which the women of Camagüey organized a demonstration demanding the release of all prisoners.³⁷

With the zafra (sugar harvest) having only just started, following some difficult negotiations that had left many sugar workers deeply unhappy, Batista was concerned not to provide a pole of resistance that might have inspired disgruntled sugar workers in a movement that could have escaped the control of the trade union bureaucracy. The government therefore decreed another truce on February 8 while the Tribunal de Cuentas, the government accountancy service, investigated the situation of the company, this time for one hundred days. This new truce was funded with another 700,000 pesos.³⁸ The official union comité conjunto (joint committee), which had been set up by the CTC to oversee the action, ordered a return to work without consulting mass meetings in the depots. In Guantánamo, Delegación 11, the local organization of the Hermandad Ferroviaria covering the membership who worked for FFCC Consolidados, denounced the truce as a sell-out and continued the strike until the 11th, when, following Mujal’s personal intervention, they were paid in cash, thereby overcoming the company’s attempt to pay 70 percent in cash and the rest in scrip until the government subsidy arrived.³⁹ The line from Caibarien to Morón was reportedly still not working normally on February 17.⁴⁰ A special congress of the Federación Nacional Ferroviaria (the national federation of railway unions, including the Hermandad Ferroviaria and unions of office workers) was called to ratify the actions of the officials and, given that most of the delegations had not been elected by assemblies of the workers, such ratification was granted, although only after considerable bureaucratic manipulation from the chair.⁴¹ Once assured that the official trade union machinery was back in control and further unofficial action was unlikely, the regime moved against some of the militants, with the Santa Clara courts condemning eighteen bus drivers and seventy-two railwaymen for huelga ilícita (illegal strike action).⁴²

Following the end of the sugar harvest, the report of Tribunal de Cuentas recommended an 8 percent wage cut, forced retirements, scrapping the collective agreement, abolishing many bonuses, and lengthening the working day, as well as extensive service cuts.⁴³ Batista accepted the report and published decree number 1535 on June 7, the so-called “Laudo Ferroviario” (railway arbitration decision), which implemented the recommended measures and gave the company an annual subsidy of 600,000 pesos.⁴⁴ Within forty-eight hours Guantánamo was again out on strike, quickly followed by Camagüey and Santiago, 10,000 workers in all.⁴⁵ Now that the sugar harvest was safely gathered in, the full force of the state was moved against the workers, the army was mobilized, the Ministry of Labor denied the very existence of the strike, and the CTC leadership condemned it out of hand. The strikers replied by organizing ciudades-muertas or “dead towns” across the region, completely shutting down Camagüey, Guantánamo, Morón, Nuevitas, and Santiago. The tactic of ciudad-muerta was a form of civic general strike in which not only did the other workers in a town strike in sympathy but most business and commerce also closed their doors. The bus workers in Santiago who worked in companies owned by the FFCC Consolidados also walked out again and, on May 9, set up camp on the town hall patio in protest.⁴⁶ The CTC, realizing that the action was escaping its control, sent a committee to mediate but still failed to authorize the strike, although claiming to understand the grievance. Javier Balaños, leader of the Federación Nacional Ferroviaria, met the directors of FFCC Consolidados while appealing to the president to suspend the laudo for thirty days. Batista refused to meet union representatives as the police, army, and secret policemen started routing drivers and signalmen out of their houses and forcing them back to work at gunpoint.

We have already seen the importance of the women from the offices in launching the strike and that the solidarity actions of family members were of significance. Given that the army was rounding up train-operating and signaling staff, forcing them to work at gunpoint, it was difficult for these workers to publicly demonstrate and picket. In a pattern that was repeated in other industrial disputes of the time, this public role was often taken over by women, either railway office workers or the families of the strikers, who also played a leading role in setting up neighborhood solidarity committees. Though women made up only 10 percent of the Cuban workforce and many of them were in the notoriously difficult organizational territory of domestic service, the comparatively few trade-unionized women workers in the Cuba of the 1950s played a vital role in initiating and sustaining militant action out of all proportion to their numbers.