By Debra Evenson

Published in November 2003

Foreword by Eddie McDermott, Regional Secretary, T&G (South East & East Anglia) The publication of this booklet in England has arisen from a chance meeting in the Cuban equivalent of Congress House between members of a visiting T&G aviation workers’ delegation and Debra Evenson, the author, in February 2002.

Debra had just finished writing a much longer report on Cuban industrial relations and employment law that she was introducing to the Cuban trade union leadership, our delegation was almost ready to leave for the airport and fly home when one of our Cuban hosts thought we may like to meet Debra and so we were able to bring a copy of the longer work home with us.

Since 2002, we have been conducting a triangular correspondence between the T&G in London, Carolyn Jones at the Institute and Debra in Havana turning the longer work into the Comparative Note that you have before you.

The T&G is extremely pleased to be associated with the publication of this booklet, not least because it makes concrete the work our Region of the T&G has been carrying out with the Cuban labour movement and the Cuba Solidarity Campaign in the UK.

Readers will be impressed that this booklet is no mere “fanzine”. Debra reports on the Cuban unions critically recognising that, in the changing economic environment, there is a pressing need to equip its shopfloor leaders, its shop stewards, with the skills necessary for an effective presence in the workplace, such skills as representation on workers’ rights and collective bargaining.

She also explains how, almost uniquely in the developing world, the unions in Cuba have negotiated a system that guarantees Cuban workers their domestic employment rights when working for foreign owned corporations.

A study of industrial relations and employment law in Cuba was long overdue; this booklet will hopefully bring the situation in Cuba to a wider audience.

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