A brief thought on union matters

As the new school year was starting, I was in my classroom, sitting at my desk and planning classes, listening to relaxing music and enjoying the solitude as I worked. However, my reverie was interrupted when a couple of individuals entered in the room and began literally preaching on the advantages on becoming a member of the teacher’s union. While I was listening to their allocution, I thought of my parents when they were young, as they came from a family that was heavily involved in their Catholic union before the Cuban Revolution took place in 1959. Even though my parents were member of a union, they were profoundly anti-communist— for some reason, they were in opposition to the common thought that made unionists and leftists equal. I thought that they were very proud of me thinking I was pro-union, but I am not. During most of my life in Cuba, the union institutions appeared to me as just another government formation. Therefore, becoming a member of the teacher’s union (or any union at all) has no appeal to me at all. After I began working as a high school teacher in this country, I became a member of the union for one simple reason: to protect myself against any possible mistreatment from the administration or early firing. After I reached a certain point in my teaching career in which the union means nothing else but an expensive membership, I decided to take a raise to my salary by forgoing that membership.

As I was saying before, I was in my classroom in perfect communion with myself when this couple of enthusiastic unionists entered in and began praising the goodness of the United Teachers of Dade. I listened to them in silence— not a word came out of my mouth during the fifteen-minute speech. At the end, they asked me to rejoin the union and I simply said “no.” At that point, one of them asked me for my nationality and I said, “Cuban.”

“Ah,” exclaimed this person, smiling broadly and masking a smarmy impishness, “I understand why now.” Then, this person said to the other slightly confused person, “I’ll explain to you later.” Soon after, they left the room together.

I tried to clarify nothing. That comment was made out of a common stereotype in which Cubans are portrayed as right-wing militants and the enemy of everything that could be close to a leftist political position. I consider myself a person with a progressive social sensibility, closer to the left and their historical demands than of the right in their maniacal defense of the status quo. I have certain political culture that put me closer to classical leftist positions. I was not offended by the comment— I understand it. As I said before, Cubans have an infamous reputation of being ferociously conservative. Perhaps an intelligent conversation rather than an uncontrollable prattle could have resulted if the unionists were not focused in making me a member of the union again. Perhaps if they attempted to create a mutual understanding of different perceptions on the role of the union organizations in a capitalist society such as ours, we could have come to an agreeable consensus. Besides, it is highly probable that in political leanings and attitudes that I am more to left than these union members pretend to be.