As if he were in the dock, the young man lowered his head and explained the reasons why he had decided to participate in the march on June 11, 2021.
The intrigue about being seen and seeing others; to friends from the neighborhood and a co-worker on the other side, in defense of the other cause, served him for reflection and analysis of his conduct.
Now he was sitting in a company room and in front of him, he had the same people (the union, the general secretary of the PCC core, the UJC secretary and the director of the organization); "the factors", as they say; the same ones that one day opened the doors for him to work there.
"I'm sure they're going to vote for me," he thought, and waited for the analysis to begin.
Why did you decide to participate in the march? It was the director's only question.
The young man shrugged, raised his head, and uttered the sentence: "I was wrong."
SUCCESSFUL COMPANY OF OPEN DOORS
A little more than five years ago, the Provincial Supply and Service Company for Education (EPASE) was a disaster, in the most exact sense of the word: robberies, loss of millions, an average salary of 287 pesos, broken contracts, disrespect for clients and a catauro full of disagreements on the part of the workers.
Perhaps if a graduate in journalism, law, philosophy and letters or any other branch had arrived, as happens time and time again in entities, EPASE would not have become a successful company with open doors, although today there the vacancies are more difficult than the meat of the national mammal, for being one of the most efficient entities in the province and to which the rearrangement? It didn't hurt him.
The recipe is provided by Osmany Costa Reyes, a Mathematics graduate, Master of Education Sciences —and I would add a "PhD in Organization and Business"—. Together with his team of risky specialists, they came out to survive when the Ordering Task messed up not a few organizations in the province and the country.
«It forced us to diversify the corporate purpose and open up to new economic actors; look for supplies in MSMEs, local development projects, Self-Employed Workers. We must banish the fear of trading with the new players. If you do it honestly, there are no problems. We have contractual relationships with 86 forms of non-state management and that helps us because the state does not provide us with everything we need.
“Not long ago we were audited and, as expected, all 86 contracts were reviewed. We released with a satisfactory rating.
«We began to apply Decree 53 to implement payment systems and we had to generate more sales. We are a company whose main corporate purpose is education works, but this year, for example, the sector guarantees us only 47% of the plan; I have to steal the other 53 elsewhere: a little here, another there».
Deploy strategies as productive flank appears, provided that what is proposed is achievable. The bulk of EPASE's assignment can be anywhere: in construction, in the Doctor Antonio Luaces Iraola provincial hospital, in the streets and facades of the city or the repair of schools, it doesn't matter if they are in remote communities like Liborio, Vicente, Loma de la Carolina or José Antonio Echeverría, better known as El Teresiano.
Only in the José Antonio Echeverría, in the center of Ciego de Ávila, they have insured more than five million pesos, a figure that made it possible to fulfill the commitment for May Day, which was 50 million, of the 140 that are proposed for the anus.
In addition to what has been done so far, the amphitheater and other work in the Plaza Máximo Gómez Báez, the Center for Attention and Classification of Street Vendors, the Provincial Commerce Company, the Canned Food Company and the Casa de la Prensa play a leading role in this.
I don't know if by happiness, by hack or by the reputation of compliance that he has acquired, but the truth is that the tentacles recently arrived at the El Pilar gold deposit, near the town of Gaspar, where a gang of his men works. With the money generated there, they bought ladder rollers, electric drills, tools for mechanics and other means.
«We even have a storage contract signed with them, for 10 years! Osmany reveals with a smile, as if he had touched Aladdin's lamp.
"There, we carry out several jobs and they want us to do others, but we cannot undertake them and within our philosophy is not to break our promised word", the young Michel Pérez de la Cruz, construction director, limits himself to saying.
The turbulent waters of the beginning, that of the regulation that caught high-ranking companies such as La Cuba, Agro-industrial Ceballos and more than 20 entities in the province that today lose more than 300 million pesos “by surprise”, could not make EPASE shipwreck.
Each year they have more profits than the previous one. This 2023 they plan to exceed 6 million pesos in profits, with an average salary of 9,756 pesos, with a productivity of 64,396 pesos per worker. If you add up the profits plus the salary, those directly linked to production came to buy 26,000 pesos!
In the last five years, there have been more than 300 finished works. The capital repair of the José Martí urban basic secondary school, in the provincial capital, or the Paquito González semi-boarding school, in the city of Morón; the repair of schools in the popular coastal council of Punta Alegre, after the passage of Hurricane Irma and many others.
The group, made up of 127 workers, including 60 young people under the age of 35, puts their entity ahead of family problems or weather events with the purpose of starting "the machinery", of extending the work to the entire territory and manage actions somewhat removed from the corporate purpose to gain resources and relieve the domestic economy.
STORIES TO BELIEVE
The effort and collective spirit is breathed deeply and the language of love is heard in any corridor or area of EPASE, among the most successful companies in the province. Moreover, since the present is written about past histories and the future about current ones, they chose not to close the doors and opened them to everyone.
«We began to form the company, Osmany asserts, with workers from the so-called Trust Task, inmates on probation and sanctioned under the supervision of the Execution Judge. Of those, today six have won the right to be party or youth members and others are brigade leaders with excellent results.
In the midst of the maelstrom of work, there are those who have left the entity due to personal problems or to seek improvement. With the passage of time they have returned and their doors are open. "He who goes well, well returns if he wishes", is Osmany's maxim.
Due to the way it works, the company is closely linked to the neighborhood and maintains attention to District 8 of the Pedro Martínez Brito Popular Council, in the city of Ciego de Ávila, in addition to carrying out other work in 11 communities in the province for the good of the transformation of the neighborhood.
Once a month they do socially useful work in the communities, they do not charge labor and the fundamental premise is to repair the school, the Family Doctor's Office, remove some dirt floors and clear the baseball field, where at end they play softball with members of the community.
Among the stories that deserve to be told is that of Deyli Barceló, who worked inside the hospital when Covid struck. He fell ill and lost both legs. “He recently called us to take him to the May Day parade. In addition, we will take it. In addition, we are thinking of finding a job for him within the company, so that we don't turn our backs on him. That was a man who worked in our company and we felt the duty to help him”, Osmany explains.
Or that of Yorkis Aldazábal Isaac, who served six months in prison for selling potatoes in the province of Sancti Spíritus and, once the sanction was extinguished and the error corrected, EPASE opened its doors to him and today he is brigade chief and future Party militant.
Or that of Erenia Frómeta Domínguez, who has been with the company for 27 years, which, at the same time, is her home and “my everything. Here I will retire, because here I learned the love for work.
Or that of Yordano and Roelsys, two handsome men from La Piñera neighborhood, head of brigades and lions at work.
Or that of the young man himself who shrugged his shoulders, raised his head, and uttered the sentence: "I was wrong." Having closed the doors and denying him the possibility of working, today he would not be a brigade chief and one of the 10 most outstanding workers, because at EPASE they crush adversities, but they do not grind down fallen trees.