CALL
We call on all the TUIs of the WFTU, on all trade unions, workers, young workers, on all continents who are tortured by the attack on their incomes, on labor relations through tax-robberyby the state, precision, privatizations, non-existent safety and health measures in the workplace, on their very lives. Who are anxious and see every day the competitions, the contradictions, the imperialist war expanding. The time has come to take the responsibility of organizing the struggle.
Call for action and struggle
To strengthen the trade unions, to make thousands of new registrations in them, to organizenow, militantly, decisively, collectively, the workers’ counter-attack. The struggles that preceded in many countries, such as France, Italy, Germany, Spain, America, South Africa, India, bring positive experience. They bring hope, optimism that they can have positive results.
When the slogan “The strong worker is the organized worker” prevails everywhere.
When unity in the working class grows stronger and becomes animpenetrable fist to the poison of “social dialogue”, social partnership, compromise, fatalism.
When our target is the business groups, their political staff and their people in the trade union movement. Particularly in the TUIs of the WFTU we must now bend to the problems of the workers in the sectors.
We must strengthen coordination between the unions, utilizing our forces in the regional organizations. Running through us, like a red thread, the direction that no hour must be lost, creation of a militant uplift in the workplaces. But these things need:
– Now meetings of the TUI Secretariats.
– Meetings without bureaucracy of the administrative boards of all unions
– Existence of a plan of initiatives and action, distribution of responsibilities to all members of the administration.
The meetings to be militant with a plan and initiatives, and to put in the struggle all the forcesso that not to give time and space to our opponents for attack. The weaknesses, the difficulties we face can be overcome only in the struggle.
Now all the TUIs should meet, draw up a plan of action and initiatives by sector. They must call for action. The escalation of the war leads to a new deterioration of the financial state of the working class. The war industry is being promoted. Billions are being channeled into the production of arms and war material in general.
All these happen at the same time that no money is given for health, education, infrastructure, natural disasters, salaries and pensions.
At the same time that the profits of the monopolies are in the trillions.At the same time that there is no medicine, water, etc. in countries. The bourgeois parties, liberal or social democratic or other variants, deny the satisfaction of workers’ needs, attack the trade unions, utilize state and private repressive forces, persecute and imprison trade unionists. They seek to strike the daily working time; they want cheap labor.
We make it clear: Capitalist development, the policy that serves the interests of big capital, whether it is called modernization, or reform or whatever it is called, is responsible for the aggravation of the situation of the working class. The high profitability of the business groups is linked to all this.
We can make it.
This is the year that the WFTU turns 80 years old.
80 years of great effort to organize the working class, youth, women, immigrants.
80 years of uninterrupted solidarity with the peoples under attack and interventions by the imperialists USA-NATO- EUROPEAN UNION.
80 years of uninterrupted effort to create trade unions everywhere, to be the shield against the attack of capital, its governments.
80 years of continuous effort to improve the functioning of trade unions to be a host place of workers where they can discuss, decide, elect their representatives, judge them.
80 years of struggle for collective labor agreements so that workers can live on wages that meet their growing needs, so that they will work less hours and retire earlier.
80 years of continuous effort to change the correlations in the trade unions, of trying to bring the workers into the class line, the conflict with the business interests, their political staff, the bourgeois parties.
80 years of effort to graftthe workers with the direction that they produce all the wealth and it belongs to them.
80 years of struggles with the line that capitalist brutality is not a one-way road. The working class can and must set the goal ofits liberation from capitalist brutality, of taking into its own hands the enormous wealth it produces.
80 years of conflict with the ITUC, theETUC against the so-called unity of the working class. Unity with the employers and their interests, so as not to harm the profits of the bourgeoisie.
80 years of fighting against the bourgeoisie’s attempt to pass the direction that with an alternation of government the working class will have a better future. We have seen changes of governments in many countries but the situation of the working class has deteriorated. Poverty, wars, refugees, repression. But it’s not enough just to make proclamations, to talk big. All trade unions, the cadres need to be close to the anxieties and sufferings of the workers every day.
– To organize the struggle for whatever the workers face, without delay.
– To make sure that the unions are the second home of the working class.
Wherever there is even one militant, class unionist to act and behave as if he were the president of the union. All the workers to address him, he must be the point of reference.
Dear colleagues,
Send to the WFTUan email with the dates of the TUI meetings, the planning, the initiatives.
If you need any help and in which area.
And because the ideological conflict is sharpening on all fronts wherever there is a need for seminars on various issues we can plan to schedule. So that we will be steeled with arguments against the opponent, to expose him to the working class. Because this is how the struggle is strengthened, more workers are convinced and enter the fight.
Thus,we believe that the trade unions must take initiatives of action that correspond to the direction and the platform of struggle of the decisions of the WFTU 18th Congress in Rome on its 80th anniversary.
Proletarians of all countries unite.
George Perros
Deputy Secretary of the WFTU
