Union Members Have "Life Changing" Visit to Cuba

Left to right: UE 150 members Greg Moss, Chris Benjamin, Nichel Dunlap-Thompson, Sekia Royall and Tim Hunt.

From April 25 to May 10, five members of UE Local 150 traveled to Cuba as part of the International May Day Brigade. The brigade, organized by the National Network on Cuba, consisted of approximately 100 people from across the U.S.

After visiting a meatpacking plant and meeting with the Cuban Federation of Unions, local union trustee and Durham sanitation worker Chris Benjamin said he was impressed to learn that “women can retire at age 60, and men at age 65 and receive full retirement benefits and a pension. The next day they can return to work while earning a second wage and start earning a second pension.”

Local 150 members learned about the economy of Cuba and the blockade enforced by the U.S. government, which prevents most countries in the world from being able to conduct any trade with Cuba. They learned that this blockade is the primary reason people in Cuba are struggling, with no access to many manufactured and raw goods produced around the world, including food, medical supplies, car parts, and machine parts.

UE150 members in front of newly painted mural at the camp celebrating 50 years since the successful Carlota Operation, when Cuba sent military personnel and tanks to help liberate Angola from apartheid South Africa in 1975.

Sekia Royall, a state worker for the Department of Health and Human Services in Goldsboro and former president of the local, said, “I learned how much we in the U.S. take for granted, and how much we waste. It was a really humbling experience to see the Cubans struggling economically, yet they still have a great perspective on life. As workers, in their unions, and in their communities, they decide how their country will be run. Sixty years after their revolution, they still decide every day to live on their feet, rather than dying on their knees.”

In addition to meeting with Cuban workers, members of the brigade participated in voluntary work at several community gardens and food production centers to help the Cuban revolution feed its people. They helped weed, haul dirt and rocks, move mulch piles, and harvest vegetables. Local 150 members also brought full luggage bags of medical supplies as a gift to the Cuban people.

Despite the blockade, the Cuban people have been able to self-organize to take care of themselves. They provide universal free health care, housing for all workers, and food rations. In Cuba education is free from kindergarten through college, including advanced medical degrees like studying to become a doctor. Students are provided with not only free tuition, but room, food and books. Sixty-six percent of the Cuban people have higher education degrees, the highest rate in Latin America.

Local 150 members visited the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) which provides free medical degrees to poor and oppressed people from around the world. The Cubans have a particularly deep solidarity with the continent of Africa; there are currently students from over a dozen African countries studying at ELAM. Local 150 members were greeted at a seminar by medical students from Niger, Benin, Palestine, Columbia, the Philippines and China, all studying in Cuba for free. In addition to ELAM, Local 150 members visited community hospitals, maternal health clinics, and schools and see how the Cuban system works for the people. Cuba has an infant mortality rate significantly lower than the U.S., and many of the hospitals UE members visited reported that not a single mother or newborn baby has ever died in their facility. In addition, Cuba was the first country in the world to stop transmission of HIV from mothers to newborn children. They have developed a drug to alleviate the effects of dementia and Alzheimer's, conditions that the U.S. healthcare system has not invested in treating.

[Editor's note: It is too broad to claim that the U.S. healthcare system does not invest Alzheimer's and dementia research.]

Every worker in Cuba is in a union. In Cuba, the unions have an official role in helping to shape overall government policies, including housing, food and wages. Local 150 members left excited to build on the relationships they established with members of the Cuban Federation of Trade Unions, who were present at many meetings they attended.

Nichel Dunlap-Thompson, a former special transit bus driver for the City of Charlotte and former local recording secretary, called her experiences in Cuba “life-changing.” She contrasted what she saw on the trip — “the effects of a socialist society that actually works” — with the way Cuba is portrayed in the U.S. media. The U.S. has put Cuba on a list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” and in 2024, the U.S. government approved $50 million to support deceptive media campaigns against the Cuban Revolution.

Brigade members participate in voluntary work at Cuban university.

Dunlap-Thompson recalled being told that former Cuban President Fidel Castro was “a terrorist, a tyrant, someone that is an enemy to the USA. I remember those media reports as a child. Thinking Fidel Castro is the worst individual ever in life... It was all a lie.”

Local 150 members plan to collect more material aid for the Cuban people and to fill a container ship in the coming months to be sent to the island. Additionally, Local 150 plans to continue its fundraising efforts to send more workers to Cuba on the 2026 May Day brigade, and to continue to build international connections and solidarity with workers across the world.

Benjamin, Royall, Hunt and Dunlap-Thompson were joined on the trip by Greg Moss, a young state employee in Raleigh, and UE staff members Troya Wright and Dante Strobino. Brenda Hines from Black Workers for Justice, a close ally of Local 150, also traveled on the brigade. UE150 plans to organize a trip next year, we hope you’ll join us!

This article was first published by UE Local 150.