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
