The following article appeared in the May 27, 2024, issue of Trabajadores (Workers), the daily newspaper in Cuba of the Confederation of Cuban Workers (CTC).

Miguel Bautista, who is interviewed in the story, is a member of UNITE-HERE Local 11. He visited Cuba in late April-early May as part of the “Labor and Youth Activists” delegation organized by the Los Angeles Hands Off Cuba Committee, which provided the translation into English; World-Outlook edited the translation slightly to improve readability.

World-Outlook is publishing the article that follows for the information of our readers. Photos and captions are taken from the original.

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By Yimel Díaz Malmierca

Miguel Bautista is one of the rank-and-file leaders of the U.S. restaurant, hotel, and sewing workers union. His worst nightmare is the greed of the employers.

Miguel Bautista is barely 25 years old and is coordinator of one of the grassroots organizations of the U.S. union that brings together workers in restaurants, hotels and sewing workshops. It currently has more than 32 thousand members in 150 work sites in different cities across the country.

For many observers, the presence of a young man among union leaders is not an isolated event. An article in the Washington Post explained, for example, that “many leaders of the movement are in their early 20s. They lean towards the nickname ‘Generation U,’ for Union. Today, union approval is the highest it has been since 1965, with a popularity rating of 68 percent, rising to 77 percent among those in the United States between 18 and 34 years old, according to a recent Gallup poll.”

Other observers, such as New York university professor Tatiana Cozzarelli, point out that we may be facing a generation that refuses to abide by the rules that neoliberalism imposed on the labor movement for decades: “This is a precarious generation that is highly indebted and has little to lose. It is a highly politicized generation, which challenges the status quo and hopes that unions can be a democratic tool to defend their interests against the bosses. This is also a generation that experienced and participated in the Black Lives Matter movement with many making connections between the Black liberation struggle and unionization.”

Bautista, for his part, recognizes that union activity in the United States has been changing and is doing so very rapidly: “We are living in a time of training for unions and workers,” he asserts.

“We have strikes across the country and we see new strategies, including many employees trying to form unions, especially in service sectors like Starbucks, Amazon, and Trader Joe’s. At the same time, corporations pressure the government to weaken the right to unionize,” he reflects.

The nightmare of union members regarding work has to do with the greed of the employers: “Corporations do not want to pay a fair salary, that’s why we have to press our demands with strikes, boycotts, political pressure actions and all the means at our disposal. This fight is impossible without solidarity among workers.”

The young man participated in the International Meeting of Solidarity with Cuba and against Imperialism, which took place in Havana at the beginning of May. This was his first visit to the Greater Antilles, and, like many others, he traveled in search of the truth hidden by imperial propaganda.

“I bring back to my country the experience of what true solidarity is, not only with Cuba, but also with Palestine, with my own compatriots during the COVID-19 pandemic, with Africa during the Ebola epidemic, against imperialism everywhere around the world. We lack solidarity in the U.S., but I will do my part to transform that perspective and also to change how my government treats the Cuban people,” he concluded.

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