France: We will be on strike on April 9

Joint statement by  Confédération générale du travail (General Confederation of Labour - CGT), Force Ouvrière (Workers Force - FO) and the Trade Union Solidaires.

February 25, 2015

Original in French here

CGT, FO and Solidaires called for a day of interprofessional national strikes and demonstrations on April 9. 

• Together, we thus express our rejection of austerity, the destruction of public services, gifts to bosses and shareholders, and the deterioration of our working conditions and life. 
• Together, we will require a different division of wealth that we produce in our work and are now confiscated by the capitalists.

It is we who make society function!!

These owners, shareholders, professional politicians or annuitants are not the ones who keep society running. What allows us to live together, to produce useful goods at all and all, to share services, share knowledge, etc., is the work of each of us.

The present organization of society rejects some of us into unemployment and insecurity to raise pressure on everyone and we impose increasingly poor working conditions (stress, physical, flexibility, etc.). But since they are not working for us, why do they decide for us?

The capitalists are useless

Last year, the 40 best French listed companies on the Stock Exchange (CAC 40) contributed 56 billion to shareholders. Just from those 40 companies there, a handful of people was divided 56 billion when we are told that unemployment is inevitable, we must work more to earn less than minimum social benefits, retirement pensions, the minimum wage and our wages cannot be increased.

Capitalists invest (part of) their money in companies, we are told? But we forget to tell us that this money comes from ... our labour only! It is ours! And we do we reverse that part through our pay.

0.1% of the profits of the CAC 40 companies is 10 maternity hospitals saved per year!

Organize for 9 April and after!

The strike and protests April 9 are important. Show the strength that we represent! In companies, in government, in the cities, we organize in the coming weeks to discuss and establish our protest notebooks. The national strike on April 9 should also help us to put pressure on those who claim to lead us every day: impose negotiations, based on the balance of forces we will create on 9 April.

Through our decisions to build locally at the base – to determine the success and outcomes of the interprofessional national strike on April 9!

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Trade Union Solidaires - Call for Mobilisation on International Women's Day Against the Macron Law

My translation of the Trade Union Solidaires' call for mobilisation against the Macron Law on IWD. The original in French is available here.

8 March 2015: International Day of Women's Rights
A Sunday that Macron will not!

Women's struggles helped win the rights and progress towards equality between women and men. Affected by wage and pension inequality, part-time work, job insecurity, women are mostly in charge of domestic and family tasks. Equality is a long struggle!

For several years, strong attacks against social rights are hitting all employees but women even more: in spite of professional equality laws, and despite the "gender" focus that the current government was supposed to implement on all its laws ... As evidence, the Macron law which provides among other things extension of work on Sundays and expansion of late hours. Which mostly concern women ...

Our Sunday evenings and nights belong to us!

56% of employees who work on Sundays are women (Dares figures, 2012). Majority of employees in retail, young women in poor neighborhoods are particularly affected. In an attempt to trivialise the change - gradually increasing work on Sunday openings from 5 to 12 per year, with up to 52 Sundays in some tourist areas, and establishing night of work between 9 pm and midnight, are true social regressions!

Many of the employees affected by this law (trade, hotels, cleaning) are already experiencing job insecurity, part-timers and low wages. How can we think they are "free" to choose to work on Sunday? The Macron law poses financial gain as decoy rather than imposing wage increases in sectors where wage increases are essential.

Work on Sundays and late night is free time, the time for yourself (time which women sorely lack!), A number of studies show a relationship between atypical schedules and the resurgence of problems in family life and social relations ... Women living alone with children account for almost a quarter of households, and are the ones most affected by the jobs covered by the Act. Extending Sunday work is to take the path of a more unjust society, where women are more precarious and have more difficulties in their professional and personal lives.

The law takes us further down the road of increased flexibility and to the company that "operates" 24 hours a day – 7 days a week ... Each driving the other in a vicious circle, commerce, transportation, child care, etc. .. And it will allow, sooner or later, the opportunity for employers to question the increased pay paid for work on Sundays, allowing to it become a "normal” day.

The Trade Union Solidarity calls for all employees to participate in the mobilizations of 8 March to demand:

• The end of all inequality, all violence and all forms of discrimination. 
• Removal of the Macron law!

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Critiquing the Green Left's problematic article on Germaine Greer's transphobia

Below is the letter and critique wrote in response to an article, published in issue #1040 of Green Left Weekly, looking at Germaine Greer's recent transphobic and trans erasing comments during her appearance at the Cambridge Union.


Dear Jemma,

I'm writing as a trans woman, a feminist and a Marxist to express my concern about your recent article addressing Germaine Greer's recent comments regarding transphobia at the Cambridge Union. As I have attached a line-by-line critique of your article, I will try to keep this letter brief.

Before I start - I don't know you or how you identify but from how your article positions people I am assuming you are a white cis woman - if those assumption are incorrect I apologise.

When I first saw your article on Facebook the person sharing it said it was positive that GLW had run an article on the issue. While I agree with that sentiment I had a sinking feeling just from the title alone as it reads like an endorsement of Greer's position. When I read your article I found it hard to follow your argument. I felt that your article misses the intent of Greer's statements - which are to deny the validity of the identities of trans people generally and trans women particular. Greer's historic statements and writings around the nonexistence of trans women and that they are instead “deluded men” “masquerading as women” with object of infiltrating women’s spaces, is a position which has a long tradition within transphobic discourse within feminism and broader society.

span id="fullpost"> While your article attempts to combat Greer's gender essentialism it does so inconsistently and in ways that could be seen as both cissexist and as erasing of the experiences of intersex women. Your article also does not address Greer's obsession with "smelly vaginas", which I think reflects an embracing, on Greer’s part, of misogynistic disgust at women's anatomy.

I think you are correct to say that having or not having a vagina does determine a person's status as a woman. However I don't think it is correct to say that gendered violence against women has nothing to do with vaginas. Indeed much violence against women, including street harassment - is premised on women having vaginas.

The use of statistics to discuss transphobia is problematic both in the casual way it is done but also because it both ignores the everyday transphobia that people experience. In addition to the very real threat of violence there are also difficulties involved in navigating medical system to access assistance in presenting as their affirmed gender this combination results in significant levels of psychological injury amongst trans people.

The discussion of statistics is made more problematic with your argument that men are not responsible for violence against women (including trans women) but instead the system. Beyond reifying the system, such an argument denies the agency of those who commit violence towards women – while this violence is based on men embracing sexists ideologies that legitimate their dominance and entitlement to control women – this adoption of sexist ideology by men is not simply a consequence of the power of ideology but as a consequence of these both experiencing material privilege from the subordinate position of women but also their perception that the liberation of women as threat to their own position.

Ultimately there are a number of sections of the article which while trying to explain the experiences of trans women, which would not be seen by trans women as reflecting their experiences and instead would be seen as examples transmisogyny. It is my opinion that when an article is going buttress it’s argument based on what it is to be a trans woman, that the article needs to be either written by a trans woman or written in close consultation with trans women. If this has been the case then it is really important that it is clearly stated that it is not cis people speaking on behalf of trans people. Otherwise you risk having an article which is patronising and alienating at best and outright transphobic at worst.

I hope that both you and the Green Left staff take this letter in good faith and that you find my comments helpful in addressing issues relating trans issues in the future. I’m happy to discuss the content of both this letter and the critique of the article.

In solidarity

Lisbeth Latham

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Solidaires - Against repression, solidarity with the Palestinian people

Trade Union Solidaires
Originally published July 30 2014
The Trade Union Solidaires wishes to provide full support to NPA (Nouveau parti anticapitaliste - New Anti-capitalist Party) militant Alain Pojolat threatened today with repression for filing and negotiating with the Paris prefecture, in the name of all those who wanted to demonstrate, requests for demonstrations in Paris in support of the Palestinian people, demonstrations which were finally banned.
 
The authorities accused him of bringing individually what is required from a collective. 

Following complicit statements by the government, it bans protest, the government will not tolerate its inability to prevent the expression of the solidarity of thousands of protestors. After trying to create an amalgam between solidarity and anti-Semitism, an amalgam clearly denied by the solidarity movement, the government now uses repression.

The Trade Union Solidaires believes that the incidents that followed the massive, peaceful demonstration at Barbès on July 19 are the responsibility of those who decided the ban. It assumes its presence in the two Parisian demonstrations banned 19 and 26 July and the public call she made to join them.
 
Solidaires demands an end to any suit against Alain Pojolat and respect the right of expression and demonstration.
 
Solidaires asked the French government to work for:

• ending the bombing;
• lifting the blockade of Gaza;
• the release of Palestinian prisoners;
• the implementation of sanctions against the Israeli state to force compliance with international law.

Solidaires calls for new protests to be held in the coming days.

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Solidaires - Lets be many in expressing our solidarity with Palestine

SUD PTT / Trade Union Solidaires
Issued 29 July 2014
Three weeks after the start of the Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip, there have been over a thousand casualties, including more than 75% are civilians. Added to these grim statistics, the wounded and the destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, wells and the main power plant.

Nothing can justify such a massacre, which is part of the Israeli government’s effort to put pressure on the population and keep it in a state of submission to an order which Israel imposes, regardless of international decisions.

Nothing can justify the complicity of either the French government or Western leaders:
Nothing is done to enforce international law, particularly the UN resolutions adopted since years
Nothing is done to stop the blockade of Gaza, which locks people into a permanent prison.

And in support of the idea that we should not import the war onto the French territory, the expressions of solidarity with Palestine are labelled anti-Semitism and the protestors are stigmatized.

Demonstrations were banned, causing incidents.

The Trade Union Solidarity has long participated in demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinian people. It has enrolled in several trips solidarity missions, struggled against the blockade and more recently participated in the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), which is the most peaceful way to apply pressure of each and every one on the Israeli government.

For a just and lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis, Solidarity with other organizations of the National Collective require:
The immediate cessation of the Israeli intervention,
Respect for international law and end the blockade,
The release of Palestinian prisoners
Sanctions against the State of Israel to impose a policy change.

Solidaires is an integral part in the many manifestations of solidarity planned in cities.

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Victorian Trades Hall Council statement on Gaza

25 July 2014
Originally Published by Australian Unionists Supporting Palestine

The Victorian Trades Hall Council Executive meeting on Friday 25 July unanimously passed this resolution, proposed by Kevin Bracken (Maritime Union of Australia, Victoria Branch).

That this meeting of the Victorian Trades Hall Executive:

• Condemns Israel’s latest horrific assault on the people of Palestine, which has resulted in over 600 deaths in the past three weeks – the overwhelming majority of the dead being civilians, and many of them children. 
• We reiterate previous policy supporting a strategy of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against the state of Israel, similar to actions designed to isolate the former Apartheid regime of South Africa. 
• We support the peaceful community protests called in solidarity with the people of Palestine, to be held on Saturday 26 July at 1pm, and Friday 1 August at 5pm, outside the State Library in Swanston St, Melbourne. 
• We urge affiliates to support these protests through attendance, publicity, and other means.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Background to this statement: On 7 July 2014, following a severe escalation in hostilities involving intense Israeli aerial and navy bombardment and Palestinian rocket firing, the Israeli Government launched a full-scale military offensive against the Gaza Strip, titled Operation ‘Protective Edge’.

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Queensland Teachers Union statement on Gaza

Queensland Teachers’ Union State Council
Originally published 19 July, 2014

“THAT QTU State Council expresses dismay at the tragic loss of lives in the current conflict in Gaza and other Occupied Palestinian Territory and that 77% of those killed are civilians including many woman and children.

In light of the deaths of at least 58 children, and hundreds of other innocent civilians, and the wounding of 2200 others as a direct consequence of this conflict, the QTU State Council calls on the parties concerned to immediately cease hostilities, as well for the immediate lifting of the seven year blockade of Gaza, and an end to the military occupation and the illegal settlements.

THAT the QTU State Council calls on the AEU and Education International to make public statements in support of the United Nations Security Council call for a ceasefire and calls for the resolution of the conflict based on United Nation Security Council resolutions, and international humanitarian law, as a means to lead to a peaceful outcome for all.

THAT QTU State Council reaffirms its commitment to boycotts divestments and sanctions against Israel until such time as it complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights and calls on the AEU to initiate a broad discussion on an appropriate BDS commitment at a national level.”

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