Our strikes and demonstrations are not reusable by the fascists!

The following is a rough translation of a joint issued by the SUD Rail Federation (the Trade Union Solidaires Confederation’s affiliate in the Rail industry) and the CGT union at the Continental plant in Clairoix (the CGT lead a campaign against Continental's decision to close the plant during 2009). It is taken from the text published on the Solidaires website.

Our strikes and demonstrations are not reusable by the fascists!
Joint statement SUD-Rail Federation / CGT Continental Clairoix

Extreme right wing groups have broadcast on the internet video appeals for their racist and fascist initiatives, which feature many images of social actions, including of railway workers and from Continental. This manipulation shows that the extreme right is looking for a social pretext for its demagogic and dangerous manoeuvres.


At the same time as these groups are increasing racist attacks, attacks are also occurring against social movement activists. The increasing trivialisation of racism in the language of elected officials and political leaders has revitalised and relegitimised a political movement that some thought to be on the brink, but now returns with greater strength in both speech and deed.

The racist escalation succeeds in intensifying the hunt for the undocumented and increasing the pressure to criminalise solidarity. We must denounce the employers' offensive against the social movements which takes on the spirit of Le Pen and lays the foundation for fascism.

The social crisis provides fertile ground for advocates of “every man for himself”. The extreme right has always thrived on misery and mass unemployment. The planned job cuts that follow one after another along with factory relocations offer fertile ground. The masses are still paying and counting the cost of the capitalist financial crisis.

Fighting against the employers' offensive, against the destruction of the welfare state (pensions, social security), is also a struggle against the extreme right. Just like the fight alongside the most vulnerable fringes of the proletariat: the undocumented worker, the unemployed and the employees threatened with dismissal ...

Let's work together so that tomorrow is not worse than today!

Our strikes and protests have nothing in common with those who exude hatred, division, the cult of the leader, the rejection of human rights, ...

Together with other forces union, association and political forces we will participate in the demonstration against fascism, May 9 in Paris.
April 13, 2010

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Thousands of French workers march to defend pensions

Lisbeth Latham

Thousands of public sector workers mobilised against the Sarkozy governments push to reduce workers’ access to pensions. On March 23, more than 180 protests across France as part of the unions’ campaign against the assault on pensions. The protest has been seen as a reawakening of the movement against the Sarkozy government’s neo-liberal austerity drive, a movement that had collapsed over the latter half of 2009.





The Sarkozy government has proposed to lift the retirement age above its present level of 60 and to increase the minimum number of years which workers work in order to receive a full pension from 40 to 41 years. The full pension is 50% of salary over the best 25 years, this figure is capped by the social security ceiling. Below this pension there is a guaranteed minimum old age pension, which is 678 Euros a month. The government argues that the changes are necessary in order to offset the impact of France’s aging population. The push to increase the pension years was first made in 1985. The attempts to attack France’s pensions have been slowed through successive waves of worker mobilisations, the most spectacular being the massive public sector strikes in 1995. In 1993 the minimum number of years of work required to qualify was increased from 25 to 40. In order to add impetus to the attack, Sarkozy has moved Eric Woerth from the Budget Ministry to the Labour Ministry, as Budget Minister Woerth pushed through the sacking 100, 000 public servants between 2007 and 2010.


In a statement issued on March 23, the New Anti-Capitalist Party highlighted the impact that the proposed changes on those sections of the workforce who already struggle to achieve full pensions. Women in particular are expected to find it difficult to achieve a full pension due to the socially assigned role of women as carers. At present three quarters of retired women receive the minimum pension which is 40% of the average male pension. Opponents have also argued that in the context of rising unemployment, with 5 million unemployed, an increase in the pension age is criminal.

The mobilisations were supported by a coalition of five union confederations the General Confederation of Labour (CGT); French Democratic Confederation of Labour; United Union Federation; National Union of Autonomous Unions and the Trade Union Solidaires. The 2009 movement drew together eight confederations. The mobilisation size, unions estimate between 600-800 thousand, was also substantially down on the height of last year’s movement, which at its height drew more than 3 million people into the streets. However the protest is substantially larger than the last inter-union mobilisation of last year. The decline of last year’s movement has been seen as reflecting a contradiction between the widespread anger at Sarkozy’s response to the financial crisis, even as the movement decline opinion polls showed a large majority of French people supported the movement, there was also growing disillusionment with polls also indicating that people did not believe the movement would be successful. The renewal of the movement is seen as reflecting anger at the Sarkozy government’s determination to push on with their austerity measure despite being rejected at the regional elections. Bernard Thibault, CGT general secretary, told Reuter on March 23 “Ever since Sunday we have heard (the centre-right) say 'we are going to maintain course'. They aren't listening and that poses a real problem”.

In response to the attack, the union confederations will meet March 30 plan further actions. The CGT is calling for further coordinated mobilisations in April and on May 1. The radical trade union Solidaires in a statement issued on March 23, called for an amplification of the mobilisations. The statement argued that for the movement to win will require dynamic mobilisations and that the mobilisations of 2009 (during which no national strikes were called in support of the mobilisations) imposes a responsibility on the unions to propose a united plan of worker mobilisations aimed at achieving an inter union general strike. This perspective would guide Solidaires’ proposals at the inter-union meeting.

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Change in the Blog

Until recently I had been hoping to operate two blogs one on the labour movement (this one) and a second blog A Child of All Nations which would cover broader issues beyond the labour movement. I've decided that this would be too much work and that its more viable to incorporate these issues into this blog.

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FRANCE: Elections a blow to Sarkozy

Lisbeth Latham

French voters have dealt a blow to President Nicolas Sarkozy following the first and second rounds of voting in regional elections. The Socialist Party (PS) expanded its control of regional presidencies to all but one of the 22 continental regions, based on a record voting percentage in the second round.


There were mixed results for parties to the left of the PS, and also a resurgence of the far-right National Front (FN). The elections have been marred by record-low voter turnout, with 46.5% and 51% participating in the two rounds.
During the election campaign, Sarkozy had told his right-wing Union for a Popular Movement (UMP): Its necessary to campaign on my record. He essentially turned the regional elections into a referendum on his governments policies since being elected in 2007.

The UMP-dominated Presidential Majority Lists received an average vote of 26.9%, down from 27.8% in the European elections and 33.73% in the last regional elections. As a result, the UMP lost control of Corsica and only managed to retain conservative stronghold Alsace.

Far from giving him the ringing endorsement he wanted, the result is a rebuff to Sarkozys neoliberal agenda.

The PS vote achieved a first round at 29.48%. This was up markedly from the European elections, where it scored only 16.48%, but down from its score in the previous regional elections 36.86% (these lists had included the French Communist Party PCF).
In the second round, the PS established Union of the Left (UdG) lists including the European Ecologie, which had experienced a major growth in support from 2.25-12.8%, and the Left Front (FdG). These lists achieved a national vote of 54.3%.
In Reunion, where the Communist Party of Reunion received the highest vote in the first round, the PS stood its own candidate in the second, round allowing the Presidential Majority List to win the region. In Limousin, the FdG stood a list in the second round.

The clearest outcome for the PS was not just a relative strengthening of its position in the regions, but also a realignment of the forces to its left, with its reliance shifting from the PCF to European Ecologie.

Far-right resurgence
The election appears to have signalled the resurgence of the far-right FN. It was a significant force in French politics during the 1990s and early part of the last decade, with FN leader Jean Marie Le Pen achieving 16.86%, the second-highest vote in the 2002 presidential election.

However, the partys star appeared to be waning. Its vote declined to 6.3% in the 2009 European elections.

In the current regional elections, the FN scored an average of 12%. In the second round, the FN averaged 8.7%, however it had candidates in only half the regions in those it averaged 17.5 percent.

The resurgence of the FN has been attributed not only to the dissatisfaction of UMP working-class voters, angry at Sarkozys failure to deliver on his promise of prosperity, but more importantly his focus in the lead-up and during the election on opening up a debate on national culture, which is said to have created a space for FNs racist politics.

Left
Parties to the left of the PS had a mixed result. Understanding this means understanding the intricacies of realignment processes occurring since the lead-up to the 2007 presidential elections.

The three main left organisations (excluding the greens) the Left Party (PdG), PCF and New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) all stood independent lists as well united slates. In the majority of regions, the PdG and PCF stood joint lists as the FdG, which the NPA had been under pressure to participate in.

The NPA has argued for an electoral and political alliance of the left based on a principled refusal to participate in or support PS governments. But both the PCF and the PdG remain open to such participation.

In the European elections, the NPA lists failed to elect any candidates. When the PdG won two seats, the NPAs position was criticised from both within and without.
At its congress in December, the NPA had an intense but inconclusive debate on its electoral strategy. The final decision was leave decisions about alliances to its regional committees. In three regions, including Limousin, the NPA agreed to participate in the FdG.

In three of the five regions that the PCF did not participate in a FdG lists, the NPA joined with the PdG to form a joint list. In a further 11 regions, the NPA participated in joint lists with other smaller left currents.

The FdG achieved the highest average vote of the left with 5.84% nationally down from 6.0% in the European elections. This vote rose to up to 14.24% in Auvergne. In Limousin, the joint FdG list achieved 13.3%. In the only region where the FdG qualified to stand its own list in the second round, it scored19.10%.

NPA lists achieved an average national vote of 3.4%, down from its vote of 4.9% in the European elections. The poor voter turnout affected this vote, as it heavily impacted the participation of younger voters who were more likely to support the NPA.

The NPAs decision to include Ilham Moussaid, an active feminist who wears the hijab, on its Avignom list meant the NPA was criticised by the right-wing media. But it was also criticised by the PdG, PCF and PS, which all said they would never stand a candidate that wore the hijab.

The NPA has been called sectarian for refusing to participate in the FdG, and this also impacted on its election results.

The impact of the regional elections on French politics is unclear. On March 14, an NPA executive committee statement argued that the growth in support for both the PS and Europe Ecologie had been fuelled rejection of the Right and Sarkozy in government ... who have made the majority of the population pay the cost of the crisis and who are destroying public services and social gains.

The statement noted that PS majorities at the regional level had not been a defence against Sarkozys defence. The election results will continue to increase pressure on the NPA to fully participate in the FdG in the 2012 presidential and national elections. However with more than 100 represenatives in PS-controlled regional executives, the coming period will also be a test for the PdG and PCF over whether they will support PS fiscal responsibility.

In the wake of the elections, Sarkozy has announced he will slow the pace of his reform agenda. However, he is continuing his attacks on pensions this looms as an immediate and major test for the left.

[This articles will be published in Green Left Weekly #832]

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Unionism of Resistance - France's SUD

Unionism of resistance

SUD-Solidaires and radical labor action in France

By Alain BARON
1 July 2009
International Socialist Review

IN JANUARY 2009, the French president Nicolas Sarkozy launched a vicious attack against the railway workers’ union SUD (Solidaires Unitaires Démocratiques in French), accusing them of having completely paralyzed one of the main train stations in Paris and, by extension, rail transport into and out of other parts of France. Since this time, the national union “Solidaires,” of which SUD union locals are a part, is periodically accused by various journalists, politicians, and union bureaucrats of being the source of radical forms of struggle developing in France.


Actually, activists belonging to a number of different unions, as well as non-unionized activists, are participating in these actions. If radical forms of struggle are developing in France, it’s primarily due to the fact that workers are facing large-scale attacks, including plant closings, job cuts, wage freezes or cuts, unraveling of the social safety net, etc. And this at a time when the heads of corporations are pocketing huge sums of money.

The permanence of a class struggle tradition

These radical struggles stem in part from the fact that every French person has experienced, at least once in his life, strikes that have partially or totally paralyzed the country. The collective memory of the general strikes of 1936 and 1968 has been preserved through long strikes in particular sectors such as those in 1974, 1995, 2003, and 2007, as well as by periodic mobilizations by youth. For part of the population, these struggles contribute to keeping the idea alive that another world was possible, free from exploitation and oppression.

In the face of this radicalism, the bourgeoisie was forced to agree to not only a series of social rights, but also to write into the constitution a recognition of the right to strike to any group of workers, whether or not they are represented by a union. Of course, this does not prevent the layoffs of strikers for other reasons, especially in small workplaces. But from a strictly legal point of view, it is possible for workers to go on strike at any time.1 This situation has facilitated the construction of radical trade-union currents in France, which have in turn maintained the tradition of class struggle.

The birth of an alternative trade unionism

The union opposition current out of which the SUD unions formed was for a long time most prominent in the national union CFDT (Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail in French).2 In 1988, during a massive strike in the postal sector, in which decisions were being made in general assemblies, the national leadership of the CFDT suspended its Paris affiliate. Few of the suspended unionists were ready to join another parent union. To continue to develop a fighting trade unionism, they decided to create a new union organization in the postal and telecommunications sectors. The acronym SUD reflected three of the principal values that workers aim to promote:

“S,” as in “solidarity,” to indicate that workers want to build a unionism that doesn’t limit itself to a particular profession, but to organize with workers from other sectors too. A unionism that seeks alliances with other unions and social movements: the rights of women, immigrants, the homeless, the unemployed, etc.

“U,” as in “unified,” to indicate workers’ desire to end sectarianism between organizations, and to seek to work together. This desire for unity is not limited to other union organizations, but is extended to other coalitions and political parties, which, for example, was evident in the 2005 mobilization against the European Treaty.

“D,” as in “democratic,” to leave control over the struggle to the workers themselves, and to fight all forms of bureaucracy inside the union. Necessary to this process is the absence of material advantages for union leaders and limits on their time in office. Different opinions must be able to be expressed in the organization, in an attempt to find the points at which at least partial consensus can be reached.

These three values can only be put into practice by building a unionism rigorously independent of the state. For the same reason, SUD refuses to be subordinate to any political party.3

Not long after its creation, this initial SUD union has became the second most important union in the postal and telecommunications sectors.

Solidaires: a new national union

With the same model used in the postal service and telecommunications, SUD unions were soon constituted in other sectors like health care and the railways. In 1998, the various SUD union locals joined with other unions who were not affiliated with a national union, notably including the tax collectors’ union. This resulted in the creation of Solidaires as a parent union. Today forty-four national unions, in the public and private sectors, are grouped under its umbrella—each with locals cooperating at citywide and regional levels. Solidaires organizes more than 90,000 workers today, and is in fact the fifth most important union in France.4 Part of Solidaire’s strength comes from its position in strategic sectors like the post, telecommunications, railways, tax collection, and health care, as well as its links with numerous social movements.

Solidaires’ general orientation

In addition to struggles around wages and employment, one of Solidaires’ main concerns is the defense and improvement of public services, which traditionally plays an important role in France in the redistribution of wealth. It also goes on the offensive against cuts to social welfare and old-age pensions, which undermine principles of solidarity, create insecurity, and limit access to services for certain groups.

Solidaires plays a significant role in coalitions struggling for the rights of women, immigrant workers, those with inadequate housing, etc. The unionism of Solidaires seeks to combine the daily struggles, with their short-term objectives, to broader struggles aiming to affect the global balance of class forces. During the great strikes over the defense of old-age pensions, we systematically sought to coordinate the struggle at a national level. In effect, the combined experience of the workers’ movement demonstrates that only mass mobilizations are able to simultaneously win reforms and open the way to a world free from capitalism.

“Workers of all countries…”

In the same way that our activity does not stop at the doors of the individual workplace, it is not limited by national borders. Facing a globalized capitalism, the struggle for sharing the wealth must necessarily be built at the European and worldwide levels. Soldaires is without doubt the French union that is most involved in the global justice movement and the social forums. Naturally, we seek to establish relationships with unions and social movements in other countries, particularly where we are fighting the same multinational corporations.

An activist in the LCR (Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire), and now the NPA (Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste), Alain Baron participated in the creation of SUD-PTT. He is a member of the international outreach committee of Solidaires.

1 A legal restriction was actually instituted in public services and administration, requiring unionists to submit written notice of plans to participate in a strike action several days in advance. But when the balance of forces is sufficient, this limitation of the right to strike is not always respected.

2 In France, in a single workplace, a worker can can choose which union to join.

3 A certain number of Solidaires activists are are members or former members of various left political currents (libertarians, revolutionary socialists, ex-Maoists, Trotskyists, New Anticapitalist Party members, environmental activists, etc.). But they only represent these currents as individuals and cannot speak on behalf of their parties if they hold positions in the union.

4 The two main national unions are the CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail in French) and the CFDT which have about eight times more members than Solidaires.

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BHP and South Australian Govenment Agree to Establish a Prison “Work Release” Program at Olympic Dam

Lisbeth Latham

On October 6, BHP and the South Australian Department of Corrections announced a new agreement allowing BHP to employ prisoners from Port Augusta Prison. The move to allow BHP to employ prisoners raises important questions regarding both the rights of prisoners and the broader rights of workers in Australia. The move also raises questions regarding the character of Australian prisons particularly as there continues to be pushes for prison privatisation in a number of states.


Under the agreement, a small group of prisoners who are close to completing their prison terms would be given the opportunity to work in the BHP refurbishment projects at its Olympic Dam mine site. Aimed primarily at Aboriginal prisoners, the program is an extension of the work camp scheme that has been running from Port Augusta Prison since 1996. As part of the project prisoners would be provided with job training which is nationally recognised. In addition workers could potentially be offered further employment with BHP following their release from prison.
Such “work release” programs already exist in many states, however the program with BHP is the first systematic program with a large employer. According to Brett Collins, from prisoners rights organisation Justice Action, what normally occurs with such programs is that prisoners or their families suggest a possible employer, and the departments of corrections will then determine whether a “work release” is possible.

In response to the announcement elected officials from the Australian Workers Union (AWU), have made a number of critical statement regarding the agreement. Paul Howes, AWU National Secretary, said in a media release on October 7 "any work experience and training opportunities available at Olympic Dam should give first preference to young Australians desperate for a job - and not in prison”. Howes continued "Prison work programs are too often used as a technique by big multinationals to undermine the rights of working people to good well-paid jobs.

Howes is correct in identifying that prison work programs can be used as a mechanism to undermine working conditions. In the US and other countries, the use of prison labour has been used to drive down labour costs and put a down pressure on the wages and conditions of other workers. Such pushes have a significant impact on the use of prison sentences. According to Collins incarceration costs approximately $75, 000 per person per year and about three times that for juveniles. Using prisoners as a labour force would potentially provide a mechanism to offset this cost and indeed function as an incentive to increase sentences to maximise the availability of prison labour.

However by attempting to vilify prisoners as being less worthy than “law abiding” citizens the AWU makes it more difficult to defend the rights of either the prisoners being vilified or the broader section of workers whose rights prisoners are seen as undermining as it makes it even more difficult for them to obtain employment upon release and makes them more likely to have to accept work wherever they are able to obtain it – which will be in non-unionised lower paid sections of the economy.

Despite the potential for prison work programs to be used to increase the control of the state over lives of prisoners, Collins is not opposed to a program that allows some prisoners to engage in the workforce. However Collins says that “prisoners should be given the chance to train in new areas, gain basic education and skills that will enable them to enter the workforce. Many have health problems; drug addictions etc and haven’t worked or completed any education which would assist them later”.

According to Collins such a program, which focuses on handling prisoners’ problems in the community, building capacity and self esteem would have the potential to dramatically reduce the rates of reoffending by tackling the some of the causes. Collins said “we feel that it is important to preserve and support it [work release programs]. It means they can create a nest egg and start supporting their family again”.

BHP’s “work release” program is being used to paint BHP as a good corporate citizen. However a motivation for the program is to find workers for jobs that would otherwise be difficult and expensive to fill, reflecting its potential to undermine wages. However, rather than vilify prisoners, a far more effective approach to defending workers rights is to fight to ensure that prisoners employed on “work release” programs are employed at the prevailing wage rate and conditions of the sector and to ensure that there is no move to attempt to use the programs as additional revenue earners for prisons.

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John Pilger on British Postal Strike

The postal strike is our strike

John Pilger

Published 22 October 2009
Newstatesman

New Labour has done its best to destroy the Post Office as a public institution. Postal workers deserve our solidarity

The postal workers' struggle is as vital for democracy as any national event in recent years. The campaign against them is part of a historic shift from the last vestiges of political democracy in Britain to a corporate world of insecurity and war. If the privateers running the Post Office are allowed to win, the regression that now touches all lives bar the wealthy will quicken its pace. A third of British children now live in low-income or impoverished families. One in five young people is denied hope of a decent job or education.

And now the Brown government is to mount a "fire sale" of public assets and services worth £16bn. Unmatched since Margaret Thatcher's transfer of public wealth to a new gross elite, the sale, or theft, will include the Channel Tunnel rail link, bridges, the student loan bank, school playing fields, libraries and public housing estates. The plunder of the National Health Service and public education is already under way.


The common thread is adherence to the demands of an opulent, sub-criminal minority exposed by the 2008 collapse of Wall Street and of the City of London, now rescued with hundreds of billions in public money and still unregulated with a single stringent condition imposed by the government. Goldman Sachs, which enjoys a personal connection with the Prime Minister, is to give employees record average individual pay and bonus packages of £500,000. The Financial Times now offers a service called How to Spend It.
Best of Britain

None of this is accountable to the public, whose view was expressed at the last election in 2005: New Labour won with the support of barely a fifth of the British adult population. For every five people who voted Labour, eight did not vote at all. This was not apathy, as the media pretend, but a strike by the public - like the postal workers are today on strike. The issues are broadly the same: the bullying and hypocrisy of contagious, undemocratic power.

Since coming to office, New Labour has done its best to destroy the Post Office as a highly productive public institution valued with affection by the British people. Not long ago, you posted a letter anywhere in the country and it reached its destination the following morning. There were two deliveries a day, and collections on Sundays. The best of Britain, which is ordinary life premised on a sense of community, could be found at a local post office, from the Highlands to the Pennines to the inner cities, where pensions, income support, child benefit and incapacity benefit were drawn, and the elderly, the awkward, the inarticulate and the harried were treated humanely.

At my local post office in south London, if an elderly person failed to turn up on pension day, he or she would get a visit from the postmistress, Smita Patel, often with groceries. She did this for almost 20 years until the government closed down this "lifeline of human contact", as the local Labour MP called it, along with more than 150 other local London branches. The Post Office executives who faced the anger of our community at a local church - unknown to us, the decision had already been taken - were not even aware that the Patels made a profit. What mattered was ideology; the branch had to go. Mention of public service brought puzzlement to their faces.

The postal workers, having this year doubled annual profits to £321m, have had to listen to specious lectures from Peter Mandelson, a twice-disgraced figure risen from the murk of New Labour, about "urgent modernisation". The truth is, the Royal Mail offers a quality service at half the price of its privatised rivals Deutsche Post and TNT. In dealing with new technology, postal workers have sought only consultation about their working lives and the right not to be abused - like the postal worker who was spat upon by her manager, then sacked while he was promoted; and the postman with 17 years' service and not a single complaint to his name who was sacked on the spot for failing to wear his cycle helmet. Watch the near frenzy with which your postie now delivers. A middle-aged man has to run much of his route in order to keep to a preordained and unrealistic time. If he fails, he is disciplined and kept in his place by the fear that thousands of jobs are at the whim of managers.
Subversive forces

Communication Workers Union negotiators describe intransigent executives with a hidden agenda - just as the National Coal Board masked Thatcher's strictly political goal of destroying the miners' union. The collaborative journalists' role is unchanged, too. Mark Lawson, who pontificates about middlebrow cultural matters for the BBC and the Guardian and receives many times the remuneration of a postal worker, dispensed a Sun-style diatribe on 10 October. Waffling about the triumph of email and how the postal service was a "bystander" to the internet when, in fact, it has proven itself a commercial beneficiary, Lawson wrote: "The outcome [of the strike] will decide whether Billy Hayes of the CWU will, like [Arthur] Scargill, be remembered as someone who presided over the destruction of the industry he was meant to represent."

The record is clear that Scargill and the miners were fighting against the wholesale destruction of an industry that was long planned for ideological reasons. The miners' enemies included the most subversive, brutal and sinister forces of the British state, aided by journalists - as Lawson's Guardian colleague Seumas Milne documents in his landmark work, The Enemy Within. Postal workers deserve the support of all honest, decent people, who are reminded that they may be next on the list if they remain silent.

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