In the face of the economic havoc caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it is not enough to call for a rent strike and moratorium on mortgage repayments. At best, it simply displaces the lack of income into other parts of the economy and, at worst, it could deepen the impact of the economic crisis on working people.
Despite widespread concern over housing affordability, as a stand-alone tactic such calls are insufficient. Instead, progressives should be campaigning for secure incomes for all working people, something that would not only allow them to pay rent and mortgages, but equally importantly it would allow them to eat.
As the pandemic deepens, many more industries and companies will close. That will mean many working people, although technically employed, will be without incomes.
Even with treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s announcement that job seekers will have their payments doubled for six months — a huge relief for the unemployed — for many this will fall far short of meeting their financial needs and obligations.
There are a number of immediate risks if people were to stop paying rent.
First, they risk being evicted from their home. While this may not happen immediately, it is a struggle that they may not be in a position to win.
Secondly, a rent strike runs a serious risk of displacing the income crisis to another part of the economy.
While many people will have limited sympathy for the plight of landlords, and many could wear a reduction in income, this is not going to be the case for all landlords, especially retirees, whose superannuation is tied up in a rental property and for whom the non-payment of rents could lead to their immiseration.
If there was to be a rent or mortgage strike, it should be limited to those whose incomes have been significantly reduced. Those who remain working, or whose employers continue to pay them during periods of shutdown, should continue to pay rent.
Doing so will help ensure the circulation of cash and allow those services that remain in operation to be paid for the goods and services being provided. Additionally, the payment of rents and mortgages will have a counter inflationary effect.
The key question should be how can we collectively maintain incomes in this unprecedented COVID-19 emergency. Governments should mandate employers to continue to pay the wages of all their employees, regardless of their contract status.
If this is no longer possible, the government should directly subsidise wages – rather than the Morrison government’s current plan to refund tax payments and underwrite loans.
By doing this, large corporations such as Qantas, should be partially or totally taken back either through formal nationalisation or via a share transfer. No worker should lose their job or income in the current crisis.
Right now, governments must fund jobs and incomes by creating more money to be released into the economy. By subsidising wages, the government would be able to position the economy not just for a more rapid recovery in the wake of the pandemic.
It would also be in a position to prioritise the expansion of sectors, such as manufacturing, which are necessary to boost sustainable energy to transform the country’s power supply to meet the equally vital challenge of climate change.
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On March 23, more than 500, 000 people joined 180 protests across France to oppose looming changes to both the French National Railway Corporation (SNCF) and to France's Public sector. These changes are seen as direct pushes to privatise the SNCF and to break the social mission of France's public sector. While these were the primary drivers of the mobilisations numbers were also bolstered by striking air traffic controllers calling for increased recruitment, teachers concerned that increases in teacher numbers announced for the new school year will be insufficient to enable teachers to deliver on the government's pledge to deliver additional teaching in areas of teaching priority, and university and high school students campaigning against changes to university entrance.
The largest mobilisations occurred in Paris where marches by 25, 000 rail workers linked with 40, 000 public sector workers, teachers, air traffic controllers, hospital workers and students.
The rail workers march achieved a significant mobilisation of the SNCF workforce. This was despite not all rail unions supporting the mobilisation, the CFDT did not support the mobilisations at all, although a number of its militants participated, and that there had not been a firm call by the CGT (the largest union within SNCF) for a strike with the union instead simply calling on workers to mobilise. The size of the protest had also been undermined by SNCF management cancelling services which would have brought workers from regional centres to Paris for the mobilisation - l'Humanite reported that some 6, 000 workers were unable to make the trip to Paris as a consequence and instead joined the public sector mobilisations in their cities and towns.
As a consequence of strikes, SNCF services were disrupted with some 50% of regional services, 60% of TGV high-speed trains, and 75% of intercity trains being cancelled. In addition, three-quarters of the high-speed trains between the centre of Paris and its suburbs were also cancelled. 40% of short-haul flights to and from Charles de Gaul and Orly airports were cancelled, while 30% of flights to and from France's other airports were also cancelled. Whilst the teachers' strikes were supported by 14.5% of teachers resulting in school closures across France.
The rail strikes are primarily driven by concerns over plans for the SNCF to be further broken up and privatised in line with European Union directives. Whilst union mobilisations often have a wide resonance in France - the government has been actively trying to paint rail workers as privileged and the mobilisations as aimed at protecting this privilege. This push does seem to have had some resonance with l'Monde reporting an opinion poll conducted in early March found that the rail strike was seen as unnecessary 58% of respondents.
The public sector mobilisations are driven by ongoing concerns over Macrons campaign pledges during the 2017 elections to cut the public sector by 120, 000 jobs and the government's recent decision to freeze the sectors normal wage indexation and to reintroduce a measure where public servants will not receive pay for the first day of any period of sick leave. In addition on March 7, the government began a nine-month period of consultation around "reforms" to the public service - which has generated concern over the possibility of increased reliance on contract workers rather ongoing employment and the introduction of performance pay. In addition, there is a fear that the reforms will lead to a greater corporatisation of France's public sector following the trajectory of the public sector in other countries such as Britain, the US, Australia. Despite these concerns, both the CFDT and UNSA refused to support the public sector strike with the CFDT leadership arguing it is too early to mobilise against the reforms. Despite these two unions not supporting the action, the mobilisations were only slighter smaller than the public sector strike in October 2017 which had been supported by all public sector unions.
On Thursday evening, a number of general assemblies were held across France by militants including by student activists. A number of these were attacked by armed gangs. The worst example of this was at the University of Montpellier 2 where the Dean of the Faculty of Law had invited and facilitated the gangs entrance into the Law Building where students were occupying - the widespread anger generated by this attack across the French progressive movement forced the Dean's suspension and his and another academic being charged by police. These attacks have given impetus to student organising and helping to build campus GAs - with subsequent GAs at Montpellier involving more than 2000 people.
The unions supporting the mobilisation have been clear that this is a start of a new round of mobilisation. Workers at Air France also struck on March 23, with 30% of flights cancelled as a result and their second strike on March 30 saw 25% of flights cancelled. Air France's unions have called a further four days of strike action for April 3, 7, 10, and 11.
Unions within the SNCF began three months of rolling strike action at 5 pm on April 2, workers will carry out 48-hour strikes every three days. The trade union Solidaires initially called on their members in the public service to take public action in support of the public service on that day in the form of "gathering, actions, leafleting, demonstration ... outside of train stations, hospitals, financial centres, Post offices, job centres". The CGT has also called for a national day of protest of protest for April 17. The New Anti-Capitalist Party, which last week hosted a meeting of France's left organisations to build united supported for the strikes and protests - is calling for April 17 to be transformed into a general strike. On March 28, Solidaires held an extraordinary National Council meeting to discuss "the best ways to build interprofessional convergences between the sectors mobilized ... It is up to the workers and each sector to decide what to do next". At this meeting, Solidaires resolved to issue an unlimited strike notice for the entire public sector beginning on April 3. In announcing their strike action Solidaires stated "we know that to win, we must anchor and strengthen each mobilization to make them the most massive and visible. It is also necessary to create bridges between the employees and the users. As well as it is the general assemblies of strikers who must decide the modalities of actions and the renewal of the strikes, we must associate the whole population with the defence and the improvement of the public services, our common goods". While Solidaires is a smaller union within France's public service, their notice aimed at constructing GAs will enable it to draw members and supporters of the other public sector unions and non-aligned workers into their discussions regarding ongoing action in defence of the public sector.
While there is a clear convergence of struggles within France, there remain considerable divisions with the movement - with the left unions still struggling to unify themselves and draw in the more conservative unions. As Solidaires said in their March 22 statement "union unity is essential to face a government that seeks to reduce collective rights, to oppose and divide the population thinking that it can hide that it is at the service of the rich".
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The halls of EU power in Brussels trembled to the footsteps of more than 100,000 workers on Wednesday as they converged from across Europe to reject crippling austerity cuts.
Trade unions and activists representing 24 countries brought the city to a standstill as they snaked their way through the streets with a thunderous march that ended in a rally at the Esplanade du Cinquantenaire park.
As Spanish workers staged a general strike and Greek rail staff walked out over privatisation, the common call in a multitude of languages was for co-ordinated action against the biggest attack on Europe's working class since the 1930s.
A sea of banners proclaimed that workers would not be forced to pay with their jobs and services for a crisis caused by the unmitigated greed of bankers.
Banners and flags from RMT, PCS, NUT, TSSA, CWU, Napo, Unite and Usdaw were prominent among a noisy British contingent.
Brussels police were out in force, barricading the entrance of every bank in the city as well as the European Commission headquarters. But the massive event passed peacefully.
As the day of action - called by trade union umbrella organisation ETUC - took place outside, the EU Commission announced a package of proposals to crack down on hard-pressed member states, threatening them with huge fines if they failed to run their economies "efficiently."
Speaking to the Star from the rally, RMT leader Bob Crow condemned dangerous EU moves to impose centralised caps on public-sector pay and sanctions against member states deemed not to be cutting deep or fast enough.
"Workers across Europe face the same threat to jobs, public services and pensions, and that threat originates from exactly the same source - the centralised banks and the political elite who do their bidding," he explained.
Twinings Usdaw convenor Pete Millward emphasised the importance of public and private sector workers struggling together against the cuts, warning that the British government's plans to cut 600,000 public sector jobs would also mean "700,000 private sector job losses."
And he rubbished government claims that there was no alternative.
Unison youth delegate Gerry Cowell, a musician outreach worker from Colchester, was proud to be on the march alongside other workers and pensioners.
"It is important for us all to unite to oppose cuts wherever and to make our protest locally, nationally and across Europe," she told the Star.
FBU national officer Dave Green hailed the "fantastic turnout" saying that it showed "the enormous level of resistance to austerity measures that governments will face."
He added: "Economies across Europe have been brought to the verge of collapse by the out-of-control greed of bankers."
Portuguese union UGT international officer Wanda Guimaraes made the point that workers "draw their strength from unity.
"Today's demonstration shows the trade union movement is a huge family that is united against cuts and poverty and against non-inclusive societies."
She stressed that unions had a responsibility to lead the fight to save services and jobs across the continent.
Organised pensioners across the continent also joined the march, with Dot Gibson of the British-based National Pensioners Convention stressing: "It is important for pensioners to link up with the union movement in opposing the cuts and attacks on workers pensions."
She said she was looking forward to a meeting next week with French, Italian and Spanish pensioners' organisations held in Paris to discuss their united response to the cuts.
Cedric Mahu of France's CGT union, which had 10,000 delegates on the march, said he would be on strike again on October 12 in his country's national strike against attempts by the Sarkozy government to take the hatchet to French workers' pensions.
More than three million participated in the day of strikes and protests, in France on September 23, demanding the withdrawal of legislation that will dramatically reduce the right of workers to access pensions. The mobilisation, which had been called by the a coalition of seven of France’s union confederations demonstrated that passage of the Pension Bill through France’s lower house of parliament had done nothing to diminish opposition to the attack on pensions. With the President Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister Francois Fillon determined to increase in minimum retirement age, the question is increasingly being posed regarding the nature of the movement necessary for workers to achieve victory.
The protests reflected an important rise in the level of support for the movement, with numbers up from the 2.7 million estimated to have participated in the last National Strike on September 7. This growth was also reflected in the number of protests being held across France, with 232 separate actions in cities and towns across France, compared to 200 on September 7. According to a statement issued b by the Confédération générale du travail (General Confederation of Workers – CGT) the growth in size reflected an increased number of workers from the private sector, particularly small and medium sized employers, as well as a larger participation by women and young people than on September 7.
The growth in the mobilization was important has the government and other conservative commentator had been hoping for a decline in the movement signally that people would accept the pension changes as inevitable following the vote in the National Assembly on September 15.. The interior ministry is claiming that mobilisations were smaller. Labour Minister Eric Woerth, told France 2 Television that "There is a clear deceleration in the protest movement. The reform will be voted and it will be applied”. Reuters reported on September 24 Fillon was reported "Government in France also means knowing how to say No". We will not withdraw this reform because it's necessary and reasonable".
Despite the claims of the government most media are reporting protest sizes consistent with the union estimates. The growing mobilizations signal a willingness of working people to continue the fight to defend the right to retire at 60, and to stop the increase from 40 to 41.5 years, the period of time workers must work to qualify for the full pension. Demand s that employers foot more of the bill are gaining traction, based on the reality that 84% the €30 billion to invested in the pension system by 2020 will paid by workers, while employers will provide 7%.
Despite the growing support the movement the question is posed how can the unions defeat the austerity measures being pushed by Sarkozy, Fillon and their supporters in the Movement of French Enterprises (MEDEF). The Union Coalition, which is dominated by the CGT and the Confédération française démocratique du travail (French Confederation of Democratic Workers) has called for further mobilisations on October 2 and October 12, some of the Confederations will also be using the Europe wide mobilisation against austerity called by the European Confederation of Trade Unions. The Union Coalition has indicated that it will meet again on October 4, the day before the Senate begins its debate over the Pension Bill, to determine additional action.
In addition to this action, the militant union confederation Solidaires, which is participating in the Union Coalition, along with the Nouveau parti anticapitaliste (New Anti-Capitalist Party) continues to urge workers to demand that an indefinite strike be called, similar to the strike movement in November and December 1995 that defeated conservative attacks on Pensions.
Early reports indicate the national strike in France today is as large as the September 7 strike and if anything bigger at least in transport. AP reports that the civil aviation authority has directed that 50% of flights at Paris’s Orley Airport, which 40% of flights at Charles de Gaul Airport have also been cancelled compared with 25% on September 7. Half of Paris RATP metro-rail services have been cancelled along with 50% of SNCF’s (France national rail network) services.
The French government expectedly is playing down the size of protests. The interior ministry has put out an estimate of street protests mid-day indicating that numbers are down to 410, 000 compared to 450, 000 on September 7. There was a gap of more than 1.5 million between the governement and union estimates of the numbers. Given that polls continue to show high levels of opposition to the attacks on pensions and support for the strikes. A poll in the Left-wing daily Liberation 63% of respondents supported the strikers, while 29% supported the government.
Strikes have also been held in Romania, Poland and Greece against Austerity Measures. The European Confederation of Trade Unions has called a Europe wide mobilisation against austerity to be held in Brussels on September 29.
More details on the French strikes once reports go up on union and left websites and I get home from work tomorrow.
Below is a video of a contigent of members of the Force Ouvriere (Workers Force) Confederation at the protests.
Hundreds of thousands of French workers are expected to join strikes to mark the beginning of parliamentary debates over a bill to reduce workers’ pension rights. The strikes have been called by an inter-union coordinating committee. Strikes in transport were scheduled to begin late on September 6, with workers in education, the Postal service and civil servants beginning their strikes on September 7.
Under the bill the workers retirement age will be increased from 60 to 62. The period that workers will need to work in order to qualify for a full pension will be increased from 40 to 41.5 years. While the amount that workers will have to pay into the scheme will be increased from 7.85% to 10.55% - enforcing an effective pay cut on all workers.
The mobilisations against pension reform have widespread support, with a weekend poll indicating that 63% of people believing the strikes were justified. The Sarkozy government has committed itself to pushing through the attack on the rights of retirees; however they have attempted to blunt resistance by delaying the implementation of the increase in retirement age until 2018, while the increase to the period of qualification will come into effect in 2020.
France’s pension scheme operates on a pay as you go system, which means that the payments of currently active workers fund the payments that are made to retired workers. As a consequence of shifts in France’s demographics with an aging population and long-life expectancies, government forecasts have estimated that there will be a short fall in the pension system of €100 billion ($140 billion) by 2050 and is using this drive push reduce pension rights and make French workers pay for maintaining the profitability of capital.
The militant confederation Solidaires argues that the pensions should be funded by reducing the dividends received by company shareholders, particularly France’s largest companies – who received €36 billion in dividends in 2009.
The inter-union coordinating committee will meet on September 8 to access the September 7 mobilizations and determine the next steps in the campaign.
The events in Greece concern us all. The Greek people are paying for a crisis and a debt not of their making. Today it is the Greeks, tomorrow it will be others, for the same causes will produce the same effects if we allow it.
First and foremost, let us express our full and unwavering solidarity with those who must endure an unprecedented austerity plan, not to mention contempt and arrogance bordering on racism. The ongoing strikes and demonstrations are legitimate, and we support them. This is not the crisis of the Greek people; it is the crisis of the world capitalist system. The plight of the Greek people speaks volumes about the nature of capitalism today. The plan dictated by the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) rides roughshod over the most elementary rules of democracy.
If this plan is implemented, it will result in the worst collapse of the economy and of peoples’ incomes in Europe since the 1930s. Equally glaring is the collusion of markets, central banks and governments to make the people foot the bill for the vagaries of the system. French President Nicolas Sarkozy still dares to talk of the need to regulate the market, while implementing measures that are more neoliberal than ever. The response to the crisis has been framed by a deadening consensus of the Right and the Left. The EU-IMF plan has been drafted by European governments of the Right and Left – and by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the IMF, an institution that has been strangling the Third World for decades and is now attacking Europe. The plan is being implemented by the Socialist government of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, while the French side of the deal has been adopted in unison by MPs of the governing centre-right UMP and the Socialist Party (SP).
Background to the Crisis The Greek debt crisis is the third phase of a broader global crisis that began in the United States in the summer of 2008. The speculative activities of the major western banks led the world to the brink of the abyss and plunged the economy into recession. This has led to escalating unemployment, alongside flagging incomes and purchasing power. Governments have rescued financial capitalism, resuscitated the banks, and revived capitalism by handing out hundreds of billions of Euros and dollars. This has made debts and deficits skyrocket and put more fragile states like Greece in a difficult position.
Now that the markets have digested the crisis, they are attacking government debts and speculating on the future of the weakest. What an exemplary lesson on the amorality of a system that is able, in the space of one year, to survive thanks to the largesse of states and then punish these very states by speculating aggressively against them. These speculators are now attacking Spain and lie in wait for further victims.
When French Prime Minister François Fillon announced on May 5th that painful measures were in store to “avoid a level of indebtedness such as Greece's,” he also announced an austerity plan, of which scrapping the right to retire at age 60 is only one component. In fact, the three-year freeze on public spending will entail a freeze on civil servants' wages and job cuts in the hospitals, schools and other public services that people need in order to deal with the social catastrophe created by the crisis. In contrast, the government has announced it will continue to honour the Sarkozy tax cap – which has already generously awarded a thousand or so members of the super-rich with an average refund of 376,000 Euros apiece.
Two Weights, Two Measures The Greek measures overwhelmingly approved by EU governments are an attack on social rights. According to the rules of globalized capitalism applied by these governments, Europe is losing ground in its global competition with the United States and emerging countries. Their solution is to regain competitiveness by attacking the standard of living and social protection won in Europe through decades of mobilization by the workers movement. This means a never-ending race to the bottom. And to think that they promoted the Maastricht Treaty, the EU Constitutional Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty as the building blocks of a Europe based on social justice and social welfare! What utter nonsense, when we compare this rhetoric to the bleeding imposed on the Greeks – at 5% interest, no less! The European banks can continue to grow rich on the Greek austerity plan, although they are the ones most responsible for the global economic chaos. There is nothing humanitarian about the “assistance plan” that has been adopted by the National Assembly. By supporting the government, the SP has lined up on the side of finance and not the oppressed.
Though incapable of organizing solidarity of any kind, the European Union certainly knows how to profit from a people's misery. Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have jointly declared that they will rescue the Euro zone by strengthening “budgetary oversight” of states that fail to meet the criteria of the EU Stability Pact. Apparently, in a neoliberal Europe, governments are only allowed to contravene the Stability Pact when they are pumping public money into the banks. Humanity will just have to wait.
Yet, never has there been such an urgent need for a social, ecological and anti-capitalist Europe based on solidarity. None of the current problems can be solved within national borders. We are all Greek workers subject to the same logic. Government debt is the product of 25 years of neoliberalism and tax cuts for the rich – on corporate incomes, capital and shareholder dividends. For 25 years these taxes have been constantly lowered, and yet we are still told that they represent an unbearable burden for employers and the well-heeled. No, this crisis is not ours. In Greece, as elsewhere in Europe, we shouldn't have to pay for it.
Our Demands, Our Alternatives That is why we demand the cancellation of the Greek debt. To reject the austerity plans, to divest the banks of the control they exercise over the economy and society, to substitute a single European public banking service in place of the European Central Bank, with a monopoly over credit, and to demand the cancellation of the debts, is to fight for a genuine European project. This would be a Europe of the peoples and the workers, where their struggles for a social and ecological Europe based on solidarity converge. If we do not initiate this break towards building a different Europe, the sovereigntist and nationalist logic – and the xenophobia that goes along with it – will get the upper hand. The race is on.
In the 1990s, neoliberal governments of the Right and Left imposed harsh economic convergence criteria in order to pave the way for the single currency. The time has now come to secure social convergence criteria: a European minimum wage; the right of European workers and their organizations to veto layoffs; and social and democratic rights levelled upwards to match those of the best national legislation within EU member countries. Such a project must be taken up by a new political force that reaches beyond national borders – a European anti-capitalist Left that is built step by step. The entire radical Left has to carefully study the lessons of the Greek crisis.
In each country, the radical Left is torn between independence from Social Democracy and participation in government alongside the neoliberal Left. We all want to defeat the Right in Europe, as in France; and that means building up the basis for an alternative to the routine return to government in 2012 imagined by the French SP. The SP has christened this election plan “Gauche Solidaire.” Is it surprising that in the Greek crisis this “Left Solidarity” has gone to speculators and no one else? •
Olivier Besancenot and Pierre-François Grond are members of the executive committee of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) in France. The essay appeared in Le Monde, May 14, 2010
Translation from French: Richard Fidler and Nathan Rao.
The conventional wisdom is that the world has largely survived the great financial crisis. Journalists and economists talk about recovery, while politicians claim to have averted catastrophe.
However, the bailouts of banks and financial stimulus packages that governments used to “solve” the crisis merely turned banks’ debt into public debt. The problem has simply been shifted to the public sphere and potential catastrophe merely delayed.
The United States, Britain and the “eurozone” (the European countries with the Euro as their common currency) have collectively given the banks more than US$14 trillion since the crisis struck in 2008. The resulting “sovereign debt crisis” (governments going deeper into debt) raises the question: who will pay for this debt?
For the pro-corporate politicians and experts, whose outlook dominates the corporate media, the answer is obvious: public debt must be paid by cuts to public spending.
Social infrastructure, welfare and public sector wages must be cut, while handouts to business and expenditure on the police and military are exempted as “necessary expenditure”.
However in Greece, an alternative answer has been given by millions of striking workers and hundreds of thousands of protesters in the streets. The Greek people see no reason why they should pay for a crisis they didn’t cause, to save the profits of the big banks and financial speculators.
International financial institutions have singled out Greece as a test case in the sovereign debt crisis.
The government of the social democratic PASOK party agreed to a €45 billion “rescue package” from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Central Bank (ECB), which comes with the requisite harsh austerity measures.
Through the general strikes and militant mass protests against the “rescue package”, workers in Greece have responded that those responsible for the debt should pay. Workers and the public should not pay back money they never borrowed in the first place.
Contrary to media claims, high public debt is not the result of unproductive, over-paid workers or bludgers living off welfare.
At the core of the global financial crisis (of which the sovereign debt crisis is a continuation) is, in fact, the fall in real wages that has occurred throughout the developed world since the 1970s.
A lower wage bill benefits capitalists in the short term, but for profits to be realised workers have to be able to buy things. The result was a debt-fuelled economy — with consumption levels maintained through access to cheap credit.
The multi-trillion-dollar bailout of banks was justified with the claim that the finance industry drives the productive economy, but another key cause of the crisis was that banks found investment in production considerably less profitable than speculating on debt.
Deregulation of the financial system (in line with neoliberal ideology) meant banks could combine and repackage mortgage, credit card and commercial debts, and sell them as “financial products” or “derivatives”.
Debts could be insured against default, and more complicated “derivatives” allowed bankers to bet on which debts would be honoured.
This casino economy collapsed with the “sub-prime mortgage” crisis in the US. Falling wages, skyrocketing house prices and high-interest mortgages granted regardless of likely ability for repayment led to large numbers of US households defaulting on their mortgages.
Suddenly, the market was gripped with a panic that billions of dollars worth of “derivatives” could prove worthless.
The banks were bailed out, but those made homeless by mortgage foreclosures were not. US banks are reporting rising profits again, but a further 7.8 million US householders are facing foreclosure, the March 17 US Socialist Worker said.
On April 29, 15,000 people marched through Wall Street chanting, “You got bailed out, we got sold out!”. The protest, organised by the AFL-CIO trade union federation and a coalition of community organisations, demanded “a tax on Wall Street profits, better regulation of the big banks, help for struggling homeowners and a jobs program for the unemployed”, the May 5 SW said.
The Obama administration has responded with some timid proposals to regulate the finance industry (fiercely opposed by the Republicans) and the prosecution of bankers who engaged in blatantly fraudulent practices.
However, the first case to be prosecuted, involving a hedge fund manager and several bankers from the huge, and deeply unpopular, Goldman Sachs bank, threatens to open a can of worms. This is because blatantly fraudulent practices were the basis of the casino economy.
One of the charges levelled by European Union politicians against Greece is that it hid the true size of its debt since entering the eurozone in 2001.
Ironically, Goldman Sachs helped it achieve this by turning its debt into tradable “derivatives”. Public debt is as good to the casino economy as household or commercial debt.
Moreover, Italy, France and Germany did the same.
By turning Greece’s debt into “derivatives”, Goldman Sachs was able to bet on Greece defaulting in the same way it and other banks had bet on sub-prime mortgage holders defaulting.
Speculation drove a “loss of market confidence” in Greece. Ratings agencies — whose endorsement of dubious banking products helped bring about the 2008 crisis — declared Greece a risk for investors.
Despite its sovereign debt being of comparable size to Britain’s, this “no confidence” vote meant Greece was only able to borrow at above market interest rates.
The PASOK government has insisted it has no alternative to accepting the IMF-ECB “rescue”.
The austerity measures include wage freezes, de facto wage cuts, a 23% goods and services tax rise, increasing the age of retirement and prohibition of early retirement, a €3 billion cut to health and education expenditure and public investment, removing unfair dismissal safeguards for workers, a new minimum wage for youth and the long-term unemployed, and privatisation of state-owned sectors such as transport and energy.
On May 5, with the entire country shut down by a general strike, half–a-million people marched through Athens. Heavy-handed policing led to rioting — which was not reported in Greece because media workers were on strike too.
On May 6, the government passed the austerity package through parliament. The strikes and protests have not abated.
Ordinary people in Greece have decided that, as they did not enjoy the bankers’ winnings in the casino economy, they should not pay for the losses.
Antonis Davenellos, a member of the Greek socialist group International Workers Left, wrote in the May 5 SW: “Tens of thousands of workers thundered, ‘Today and tomorrow, and for as long its needed, we are all strikers’.
“This fury explains the incredible resilience of the demonstrators, who flooded the centre of Athens despite the unprecedented rain of tear gas fired against them by the police ...
“The chants of the revolutionary left were taken up by the overwhelming majority of the demonstrators — for example, ‘Robbers, robbers, capitalists: Your profits cost human lives’.
“Moreover, the social base of social democracy itself — the thousands and thousands of workers who had voted for PASOK — was there ... angrily attacking a government in which they had illusions only a few months before.
“Now they chanted ... ‘Self-illusions are over — either with the capitalists or with the workers’.”
40 anticapitalist groups plan European solidarity with Greek struggle
From International Viewpoint
1. The global economic crisis continues. Massive amounts of money have been injected into the financial system – $14 trillion in bailouts in the United States, Britain, and the eurozone, $1.4 trillion new bank loans in China last year – in an effort to restabilize the world economy. But it remains an open question whether or not these efforts will be enough to produce a sustainable recovery. Growth remains very sluggish in the advanced economies, while unemployment continues to rise. There are fears that a new financial bubble centred this time on China is developing. The protracted character of the crisis – which is the most severe since the Great Depression – reflects its roots in the very nature of capitalism as a system.
2. After a harsh wave of job cuts, in Europe the focus on the crisis is now on the public sector and social welfare system. The very financial markets that have been rescued thanks to the bailouts are now up in arms about the increase in government borrowing this has involved. They are demanding massive cuts in public expenditure. This amounts to a class attempt to shift the costs of the crisis from those who precipitated it – above all, the banks – to working people – not just those employed in the public sector but also all those who consume public services. The demands for austerity and public sector ‘reform’ are the clearest sign that neoliberalism, intellectually discredited by the crisis, nevertheless continues to dominate policy-making.
3. Greece is currently in the eye of the storm. It is one of several European economies that are particularly vulnerable, partly because of a buildup of debt during the boom, partly because they find it hard to compete with Germany, the giant of the eurozone. Under pressure from the financial markets, the European Commission, and the German government, the government of George Papandreou has torn up its election promises and announced cuts amounting to four per cent of national income.
4. Fortunately Greece has a magnificent history of social resistance running back to the 1970s. Following on from the youth revolt of December 2008, the Greek workers’ movement has responded to the government’s cuts packages with a wave of strikes and demonstrations. We also welcome the example of the Iceland referendum in which people rejected debt refunding imposed by the banks.
5. Greek workers need the solidarity of socialists, trade unionists, and anti-capitalists everywhere. Greece is simply the first European country to have been targeted by the financial markets, but they have plenty of others in their sights, first of all, Spain and Portugal.
6. We need a programme of measures that can lift the economy out of crisis on the basis of giving priority to people’s needs rather than profits and imposing democratic control over the market We need to stand for an anti capitalist answer: our life, our health, our jobs before profits.
- All cuts in domestic public expenditure to be halted or reversed: stop pensions ‘reform’; health and education are not for sale;
- A guaranteed right to work and a programme of public investment in green jobs – public transport, renewable energy industries, and adapting private and public buildings to reduce carbon dioxide emissions;
- For a public banking service and financial system under public control!
- No scapegoating of immigrants and refugees: legalize them!
- No to military expenditure: Withdrawal of Western troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, drastic cuts in military spending, and the dissolution of NATO
7. We resolve to organize European solidarity activities again cuts and capitalist attacks. A victory for Greek workers will strengthen resistance to the cuts elsewhere.
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.
Revitalising Labour attempts to reflect on efforts to rebuild the labour movement internationally, emphasising the role that left-wing political currents can play in this process. It welcomes contributions on union struggles, internal renewal processes within the labour movement and the struggle against capitalism and imperialism.
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