anteproyecto CTC HAVANA, Cuba, 11 October Granma

Cuban workers have issued over 160 thousand proposals during debates on the new draft labour code, which was submitted for consultation with the workers last July; the process is now about to conclude, according to a report by Granma newspaper. 

Some 67 thousand 367 workers' assemblies have thus far been held till this week, which stand for 98 percent of all scheduled meetings, including the debates on the draft code by workers abroad. Some 1, 400 meetings are still to be held, the paper reported. 

The consultation process is aimed at having a feedback from millions of workers about their criteria on the law that rules labor activity. 

According to Granma, there was generalized consensus in all meetings about modifying the current code, which has been in force since 1985, given the ongoing transformations in the country in tune with the current economic and labour scenario. 

All opinions have been collected and analyzed by commissions based at municipal, provincial and national levels, said Xiomara Enriquez, an official in charge of labour and social issues with the Cuban Workers' Confederation (CTC).

 

www.realcuba.wordpress.com By Patricia Grogg

Cuban doctors in HaitiPORT-AU-PRINCE, Aug 28 2013 – It’s Saturday, and the entrance hall of a police station in front of the busy market in Salomon in the Haitian capital has become an improvised health post. In a few minutes there is a long queue of people waiting to be seen by the Cuban medical brigade.

The economic war against CubaFight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 234 August/September 2013

• The economic war against Cuba, Salim Lamrani, Monthly Review Press, New York 2013, 142pp, ISBN 978 1 583673 40 9

Salim Lamrani provides a concise look at the US blockade imposed on Cuba since 1960. His book gives an overview of how policy towards Cuba has changed since the revolution of 1959 as the US has become more determined to destroy the revolution. The blockade has been used not only to strangle Cuba’s economy but also to stop essential food and medicines reaching the island. Fidel Castro described the blockade as ‘attempted genocide’.

cuban doctorsFight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 234 August/September 2013

10,500 students graduated from Cuba’s medical universities in July 2013. Just over half of them, 5,683, are Cubans and the remaining 4,843 are foreigners from 70 countries and regions. The largest groups of foreign graduates were from Bolivia (855), Ecuador (718), Mexico (444), Argentina (387) and El Salvador (386). They graduated on medical science courses comprising several branches, including medicine, dentistry, nursing, psychology and healthcare technology, which includes 21 different sub-specialties.

cuba-southafricaCUBA STANDARD —In another success in its efforts to diversify for-pay medical service exports, Cuba is nearly doubling its medical program in South Africa.

The number of Cuban doctors working in the African country under a bilateral program will grow from 119 to 213 within the next three months, Alex Carreras Pons, head of the cooperation delegation of Cuba’s Ministry of Public Health (Minsap) in South Africa, told Prensa Latina.

Video highlights produced by Cubanos en UK from the successful celebration of the 60th anniversary of the attack on Monaca Barracks which sparked the Cuban revolution in 1953. The event at Bolivar Hall, London, was organised by Rock around the Blockade and Cubanos en UK and supported by the Cuban embassy, along with other Cuban artists in Britain.

 

www.cubanews.ain.ukCTC

In what is a usual democratic practice in Cuba, workers in different economic sectors began debating a new labor code recently proposed to the Cuban Parliament, which the lawmakers forwarded for the workers' consideration before its final approval by the top legislative body.

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 233 June/July 2013FAO

On 29 April, José Graziano da Silva, Director-General of the United Nations Organisation for Food and Agriculture (FAO), sent congratulations to Fidel Castro, historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, and the Cuban people, ‘for having fulfilled in advance the goal set by the World Food Summit, held in Rome in November 1996, that proposed to halve the number of undernourished people in each country by the year 2015.’ Da Silva adds that Fidel’s speech at that Summit still lingers in their collective memory, especially his conclusion that: ‘the bells that toll today for those who die of hunger every day, will toll tomorrow for humanity if it refused, failed or could not be wise enough to save them.’

Da Silva refers to Fidel’s comment in the subsequent press conference that even if the target were achieved ‘we would not know what to say to the other half of humanity if it would not be freed from the scourge of hunger.’ Da Silva said the FAO conference in June 2014 would finally make the total eradication of hunger its priority. He ended: ‘At that time, we will pay a tribute to Cuba and 15 other countries that have been most successful in reducing hunger’. Meanwhile UNICEF cites Cuba as the only country in Latin America free from child malnutrition.

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 233 June/July 2013

Hands of AssataSince 1959, nearly 3,500 Cubans have been killed and 2,100 permanently maimed as a result of terrorism launched from the United States by groups with links to the US government. Not a single US citizen has been injured or killed by terrorism linked to revolutionary Cuba. The only Cuban terrorists are counter-revolutionaries recruited by the CIA. Most infamous among them is Luis Posada Carriles, who lives freely in Miami. President Obama has excelled in the US practice of state terror: through its occupying armies, support for dictators, rendition flights, torture of prisoners, forced feeding of hunger strikers in Guantanamo prison camp, drone-strike assassinations around the world and repression of internal dissent. Yet in the topsy turvy world of imperialism, the US labels socialist Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism and points to black revolutionary Assata Shakur to prove it. HELEN YAFFE reports.