One solution - Revolution!

(via dirty-rotten-scoundrel)

South Punjab Labour Conference, Multan, 7th September 2007

From MST (Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement)

One hundred years ago, Clara Zetkin, director of the German Social Democrat Party, successfully proposed the establishment of March 8th as International Womens Day. This historic reference alone would be enough to mark the date in its primary sense: struggle. It was on this path that women so often went out into the streets in every part of the world: for the right to vote, to equal wages, to denounce the daily violence that they experienced, from domestic humiliation to the most brutal physical violence.

In a country with one of the worst social inequalities in the world, with land, income, and power concentrated in the hands of an elite, profoundly marked by the latifúndio and by imperialist exploitation, the impacts fall most strongly on women. According to a study by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, 80% of the people without access to income in Brazil are women. And they are the ones who must do two or three jobs, often considered “help” and without compensation.

In the countryside, this reality is even more striking. According to the UN organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO), only 1% of the rural properties in the world are in the name of women. And in Agrarian Reform as well, the index is low: fewer than 15% of land is registered in the names of women. Around 6.5 million women farmers are illiterate. The production model given highest priority by the Brazilian state as revealed in the details of the last Farm Census, shows that there are 15 million landless in the country. Of these, at least 50% are women. Behind the large number of landless, a data from the Census expresses the contradiction: only 1% of the landowners in Brazil hold 46% of the arable land.

Agribusiness, which receives most of the public investment for production, accumulates another shameful title for Brazil. After being the main consumer of agro-toxins, it’s now the second country in the world in the cultivated area in genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). While the developed countries follow the reverse path, concerned with the quality of food, our population needs to poison itself to ensure the profits for the transnational corporations. This is because they try to convince the world that the transnational corporations would end the need for pesticides. So how else to understand the immense quantity of poisons to maintain production of GMOs? The Census showed that almost 80% of the rural property owners use agro-toxins, much more than necessary. The huge volume of herbicides applied in Brazil contaminates the soils, water sources, and even the Guarani aquifer. The contamination gets to us through the water that we drink and through the farm products irrigated with contaminated water.

There is no lack of data proving the harm to human health caused by agro-toxins and transgenics, many more times to women, such as the contamination of breast milk and impacts on fertility. But none of this seems to be reason enough to move the perverse model of agribusiness off the path that it is on.
And for this reason the rural women are mobilizing, confronting oppression and exploitation. We will not be silent. Every year, we take on the historical responsibility left by the socialists.

This year, we organized the Day of Struggle Against Agribusiness and Against Violence: for Agrarian Reform and Food Sovereignty. We are going into the streets all over the country to let society know about our demands, our alternatives for health, for autonomy, for equality, for the end of exploitation. We join the women from the cities who have also for many decades carried out basic struggles for all of Brazilian society. We know that this is the only way possible to achieve our rights.

We are coming out of the tunnel,” affirmed finance minister Elena Salgado creatively, when the third quarter unemployment figures came out in late October. 4,137,500 people were jobless, 17.93 percent of the population available for work. The Spanish state’s official unemployment rate is higher than in any other European country except Latvia (19.7 percent). These official government figures exclude a large number of women and immigrants who want to work but don’t register.

The last 12 months have seen over a million and a half jobs lost. Over one million families have two adults out of work. Some areas, such as Andalusia, have unemployment at nearly 30 percent. Salgado and the PSOE (Socialist Party) government base their optimism on the fact that unemployment “only” rose by 0.5 percent in the third quarter. This is in comparison to a leap from 13.9 percent to 17.4 percent in the first quarter that had panicked the Spanish ruling class.

The recession in the Spanish state began in the second quarter of 2008 and GDP has fallen by 4 percent in the six quarters since. Most analysts think that Spain will recover more slowly than the rest of the EU, despite being Europe’s fifth largest economy. There are structural reasons for this: the Spanish state depends heavily on foreign investment and is not a large exporter. It took longer to recover from the 1970s recession than the rest of the continent, and its unemployment rates have always been higher than in the rest of Western Europe, even in times of boom.

Ever since the dictator Franco opened Spain up to foreign investment in 1959, the country’s economy has been excessively dependent on construction and tourism. The collapse of the 50-year construction bubble in 2007-8, the first manifestation of the crisis in the Spanish state, has left countless blocks of flats half finished and one million new homes unsold, all this in a sector which just two years ago accounted for 9 percent of GDP.

The Spanish state’s biggest export industry is cars, but the factories developed by multinationals such as Ford, Renault, Fiat, General Motors or Volkswagen several decades ago are no longer viable. Although Spain is still a low-wage economy in Western European terms, many capitalists are now relocating to lower-wage countries in Eastern Europe.

Socialist government: workers’ friend?

Prime minister Zapatero was elected in 2004 on the back of the mass demonstrations against the Iraq war and a general rejection of the conservative Partido Popular (PP), and he was re-elected in 2008. After the financial crash Zapatero insisted that the Spanish model was the way forward for capitalism. He argued that the greater regulation of banks Spain meant it was protected against the kind of bank collapses seen in Britain and the US. It is true that Spanish banks have not needed such enormous bailouts, but there are deeper problems within the economy. The level of household debt tripled in the decade to 2008, and major banks have sustained huge losses with the bad debt of construction firms. Surreptitious government support and accounting manoeuvres may keep banks afloat for now, but in a semi-catatonic state, without the ability to invest and so kick-start the economy.

Zapatero has claimed repeatedly that “we will never make the workers pay for the crisis”. His government has used subsidies to employ 400,000 construction workers on public projects and has been paying benefit of €421 a month to the approximately 25 percent of unemployed people with no social security entitlement. The employers and the PP have helped Zapatero appear left wing with their rabid attacks on the “socialist” government. They call for reforms to make labour more “flexible”, arguing that if sacking workers is easier, then companies will take on employees. In a country where labour law reforms over the past 20 years have left workers increasingly unprotected and levels of precariousness extremely high (over 80 percent of the under-30s employed have no fixed contracts), it has been easy for Zapatero to pose as the “workers’ friend”.

In 2003-4 Spain had the biggest anti-war movement in Europe and in June 2002 a one-day general strike defeated the PP’s plans to cut unemployment benefit. The gap between a militant recent history and the low levels of struggle today needs to be explained.

Union response

The measures taken by Zapatero have been sufficient to keep the two major union federations, Comisiones Obreras (Workers’ Commissions) and the UGT (General Workers’ Union), on board. They wield the fear and hatred of the right to keep workers in line. Zapatero and the PSOE are the government that the Spanish ruling class needs at present: resistance would almost certainly be much more widespread if the PP were in power.

Although Zapatero has not had to resort to massive bailouts, the government has made billions of euros available to entities “with problems”. It is not clear exactly how much money has been pumped into the big construction firms to stop major bankruptcies which could ripple through the economy. But these hand-outs will have to be paid for and it is clear that huge cuts in social expenditure, already the lowest in percentage terms of the EU15¹ in education and health, will be needed. Zapatero’s balancing act of “protecting” workers while administering the capitalist crisis is coming to an end. Just this October, the government announced measures to pay for the crisis that include a rise in VAT.

The subservience of the union bureaucracies and the weakness of Spain’s trade unions (only around 15 percent of workers are unionised) mean that the union left, partly at the base of Comisiones and UGT, but mainly in a multitude of small unions, has a big fight on its hands to unite and mobilise. The biggest of these small unions is the sectarian but militant CGT, of anarchist origins. Others have developed through expulsions from Comisiones. Still others have their origins in the 1970s transition from dictatorship to democracy, such as STE (a teachers’ union). There are radical nationalist unions, such as LAB in the Basque Country, now being repressed. It is notable that the anti-capitalist movement in the Spanish state, capable of mobilising hundreds of thousands of mainly young people, has not spilled over into union activism. Many anti-capitalist militants, prepared to face down the police in the big mobilisations of recent years, do not yet see the need to fight in the workplaces.

The lack of a strong political voice to the left of Zapatero is a major weakness. Millions of people in the Spanish state are part of a “social left”, many of them influenced by anarchist or autonomist ideas, but the organised political left is very weak. Izquierda Unida (Left Unity), the coalition led by the Communist Party, is in long-term decline and has only two parliamentary seats. Unlike neighbouring Portugal or France, no new party has emerged from the anti-capitalist movement. At present, the small forces of En Lucha² are pressing for unity with the Fourth International group, organised as Izquierda Anticapitalista.

Buses and oranges

None of this gloomy summary means that the working class has been defeated. It is more a question of caution and political perspective. Time and again workers faced with the sack come out and demonstrate, but union leaders seek to divert every struggle to defend jobs into the “realist” option of negotiating greater financial compensation for job losses. Nevertheless, there have been a number of struggles this year, and a clear victory in an important sector could transform the situation.

The most talismanic struggle recently was that of the Barcelona bus drivers. In 2008 they won the right to two days off a week after a long series of strikes. They based their fight on mass assemblies of up to 1,500 drivers and the involvement of anyone who wanted to be involved, whatever their union affiliation. Despite this victory, the bosses have manoeuvred to cut wages and staff in exchange for the two days a week off. At the time of writing the drivers have scheduled an all-out strike from 10 January to defend their conditions. It will be a key test of strength.

A more recent victory was recorded by orange pickers and packers in the Guadalquivir valley in the province of Córdoba. On 5 November these seasonal workers, mainly women and immigrants working in highly precarious conditions, won a nine-day strike. They demanded that the bosses respect the collective agreement to pay €6.42 an hour instead of the common €5 and not force workers to do overtime. The implementation of the agreement will lead to 1,400 more workers being taken on. The orange strike was led by a small militant union, the SAT (Andalucian Workers’ Union). As in the case of the Barcelona bus drivers, the presence of a leadership insisting on workers’ democracy, with daily assemblies of up to 2,000 workers and flying pickets, and confidence that the struggle could be won was key to victory.

We hear a lot about green shoots these days. It is a pleasure to quote one of the SAT’s leaders, Lola, on the new militant unionism: “The tree’s growing and every day it has more branches.”

When Visteon managers sacked the entire workforce with six minutes’ notice they expected the workers to walk away heads bowed. Instead, they had unleashed a bitter two-month battle of occupations, roof-top protests, 24-hour pickets, lobbies and demonstrations.

Last March Visteon UK went into administration. Six hundred workers in Belfast, Basildon and Enfield were sacked with six minutes’ notice. They were left to claim statutory redundancy payments. Even workers with over 30 years’ service would only have got about £9,000, most a lot less. Their pensions, those of ex-Visteon workers in Swansea and retirees, went into the Pension Protection Fund, which would result in reduced payments.

Meanwhile, Visteon UK executives saved their pensions and fat-cat salaries through being employed by their own Visteon Engineering Services set up prior to administration. They expected the workers would walk meekly away.

But, as Basildon Unite convener, Frank Jepson, explained in The Socialist (13 May): “The Irish Visteon workers in Belfast took a proactive stance, refusing to leave the factory. At first our guys were shocked, because they had probably trusted the employer too much and believed that Visteon UK directors were trying to make the business viable. When it happened the guys were on their knees, their guts were kicked out. Also, Kevin Nolan (the Enfield convener) and myself were inexperienced. The place was covered with security guards. I think there wasn’t enough confidence at that point to make a stand. But that evening Kevin and I spoke to each other, we rang round when everyone had had time to digest what had happened and planned to come back the next morning, 10am, to storm both the plants at the same time”.

Thus began a seven-week struggle, drawing to a close on 18 May, as the workers exited the plants having won a victory, a substantial financial package from Ford, via Visteon.

Militant class action

THE FUNDAMENTAL LESSON of the Visteon struggle is that militant action can win. The workers did not walk away. They defied the law, occupied their plants and, in the case of Basildon and Enfield, mounted 24-hour pickets. They protested at Ford showrooms and prepared to picket Ford plants. Mass action, backed up by solidarity from other sections of the working class, brought the mighty Ford Motor Company to its knees. As Frank Jepson says: “Our victory shows that if you’re determined to make a stand you can beat the big companies. Six hundred workers beat Ford and Visteon. That’s massive, a real David and Goliath”.

As with the Lindsey oil refinery strikes earlier in the year, the initiative came from the workers themselves, not the trade union officials. At the beginning, many of the workers expressed the view that the British working class is too slow to move, accepting attacks without fighting back. ‘We should be like the French’, they would say.

In a context in which thousands of jobs are disappearing every day, apparently without a fight, it is understandable that workers may think there is some kind of British disease that prevents the working class from fighting. The reality is that workers in Britain have faced decades of neo-liberal attacks. Rather than ‘take it lying down’, they fought tremendous battles against the brutal policies of wage restraint, job cuts, privatisation, the decimation of manufacturing, anti-trade union legislation and so on through the 1970s and 1980s. But increasingly through the 1980s and 1990s, trade union leaders moved to the right, preferring to manage defeat rather than lead a fight. Anti-trade union legislation also held back struggle, partly in the minds of workers themselves, but mainly because it has been used by the leadership as a reason not to engage in struggle.

This is particularly so in the global car industry, which faced over-production and over-capacity even before this current economic crisis. Mergers, takeovers and outsourcing have been met by union leaders with strategies such as ‘concession bargaining’, accepting cuts in wages and worsening conditions as the price of saving jobs. Visteon shows, however, that no amount of concessions will save a factory if the bosses are determined to close it. Visteon workers had been told by their national officials to accept a three-tier workforce, a move from three to two shifts (losing shift money) and other ‘efficiencies’ to save plants that the bosses had already planned to close.

If it were down to the determination of the workers themselves, any idea that British workers take it lying down would simply not exist. But, with a few exceptions, like the PCS civil service union and RMT rail and transport union, the actions of the union leaders over years have undermined workers’ confidence to fight, or that they would be supported by their union. Through their actions, the Visteon workers have adopted the militancy of French workers. This lesson will be learned by others who face similar attacks.

Management double dealing

VISTEON WAS SPUN off by Ford in 2000. The workers were promised Ford ‘mirrored’ terms and conditions, and a job for life. Throughout their time working for Visteon their ID cards still said Ford. Many of the men and women had worked for Ford and then Visteon for 25 years and longer. While at Visteon they had received Ford 30 years’ service commemorative vases. But when they were cast out with nothing, Ford bosses claimed that they had no obligation to them! Visteon, they said, was an entirely independent company.

This is typical of the methods used by major companies to shift around profits and avoid obligations. Visteon bosses pretended to the workforce that they were doing all they could to make the plants viable. The reality is that they were never intended to be. It was a device to slash costs at the expense of the workforce. As Ford components plants, these factories had been profitable. Suddenly, as Visteon, they were not, despite improvements in productivity, as the prices paid by Ford for the components were deliberately low. Profits from Visteon UK were hived-off to other parts of Visteon Corporation, such as the Visteon Customer Technology Centre up the road from the Basildon plant. An allegedly independent company, it was another way of siphoning off profits to make it look like Visteon UK was making a loss. As the workers themselves commented, this was akin to money laundering, except it was all legal.

Attacks on workers’ pay and conditions followed, with two- and then three-tier contracts for new workers. They demanded that the ex-Ford workers break their mirrored contracts. They planned to shut down in higher-paid countries and outsource the work to low-cost Eastern Europe. During this dispute, the workers found evidence that the management had discussed closure and outsourcing as early as 2006. Yet, up to the last minute, the bosses were still demanding concessions from them.

In Swansea, four years ago, a new shop stewards committee was elected, with Socialist Party member Rob Williams as convener, to fight the relentless attacks on pay and conditions. In 2008, after balloting for strike action, Visteon workers won a 5% pay rise, which also applied to those employed immediately after Visteon was spun off from Ford. Successful resistance to attempts to remove Ford contracts and the lack of any comparable alternative employment in West Belfast, when combined with decisive local leadership, gave the Belfast workers the confidence to resist in March.

The developing strategy

A PRIMARY CONCERN of the workers was to control the plants, to prevent them being reopened by another company, or machinery and components being removed. While the workers were in occupation, they controlled the plants. In Belfast, this continued throughout. Police, security and the administrators were driven away and the workers secured the building. This was the strongest basis from which to conduct the fight. As well as giving the workers control over the assets and plant, it also enabled high levels of organisation, with daily mass meetings and shop stewards committee meetings three times a day.

In Enfield, the workers occupied for ten days until driven out by court rulings. In Basildon, the occupation ended early under pressure from the police. Round-the-clock pickets were then mounted to prevent anything moving. Particularly important in Basildon, once the workers were on the gates, were actions to keep everybody together and boost morale. They held a protest at the Visteon Customer Technology Centre, a family day, a demonstration through Basildon and another day of action in Basildon town centre.

The workers also realised the importance of building support among the local community. Posters went up. They leafleted and collected money at local workplaces, stations and supermarkets. Workers at the tractor plant in Basildon, for example, recognised that they could be next, and collected hundreds of pounds in support.

Visteon workers wanted to pressure Ford to intervene to stop the sackings. Successful protests were organised at Ford showrooms, some of which were shut down for the duration of the protest. Most importantly, they appealed to Ford workers to support them. Socialist Party members from the start emphasised that winning solidarity from Ford workers would be crucial to forcing Ford to act.

The Visteon battle coincided with the 25th anniversary of the miners’ strike, and some of the lessons of that historic strike were discussed on the picket lines. One of the main lessons was the importance of solidarity. References were made to the mass pickets of mines that were still working in order to bring them out.

Visteon workers understandably thought Ford workers – some of whom had worked at Visteon – should walk out in support. Of course, had that happened on a large scale it would have been superb. However, we did not agree with the demand in leaflets of other organisations that any individual Ford worker who wanted to support Visteon workers should walk out. In the current climate of massive job losses, following years in which the leadership had failed to fight job cuts and short-time working at Ford itself, to expect Ford workers to suddenly take illegal action in support of Visteon workers was a big ask. The working class cannot just be turned on and off like a tap.

How to win that solidarity was the key issue. We put forward the strategy of calling for the blacking of Visteon parts. If any worker was victimised for doing so, the Unite union should call them out on strike. This would make mass action by Ford workers more realisable.

The Unite leadership invited Visteon conveners to a national meeting with Ford conveners. While that meeting agreed a resolution to support Visteon workers, exactly how this was to be done was not addressed. Later, after a derisory offer from Visteon was rejected and Ford bosses still denied any obligation, the national Unite leadership organised a meeting of conveners and officials, out of which came the plan to picket Ford’s Bridgend plant in Wales.

Yet, as with the miners’ strike, which others referred to romantically without carefully drawing the full lessons, we realised that simply turning up and picketing may not be enough. In discussions, it was raised that the workers should approach Ford conveners to ask for meetings with stewards and members, to explain the case so that Ford workers understood what was at stake and why they were being asked to take action. We also argued that the Unite leadership should take the lead, going to Ford plants and assuring the workers of their full support.

It was the threat of picketing Ford Bridgend that brought Ford management to the table. The leaders of all three plants agreed with the approach of preparing the ground and met the convener and stewards at Bridgend. Frank explains: “We wanted to get the Ford conveners on board to open the door to meetings with the stewards and workers. The pickets were our trump card. We didn’t want to do it without getting full support of the Bridgend workers. Kevin Nolan and I went to meet the Bridgend convener and senior stewards to lay the groundwork and to plan it. That was absolutely the right thing to do. It was very productive; the stewards were definitely on board”.

The importance of leadership

UNITE OFFICIALS VISITED the plants in the first couple of days and assured the workers of their full support. However, on a day-to-day basis, the workers felt that the union did not give the support they expected. Many at Basildon and Enfield felt that the practical assistance and advice that should have been provided by the union were actually provided by socialist supporters. One of the reasons for the level of support for Rob Williams, sacked convener of the ex-Visteon plant at Swansea, is the role he has played in Visteon and in the car industry in general. In the vacuum of leadership, Rob has offered not just general support but specific guidance to workers fighting attacks, illustrating the role that even just one Socialist Party member can play, not only in one workplace, but across an industry. The national officials, hiding behind anti-trade union legislation, were not prepared to come out and lead action. But the Visteon convenors and key shop stewards were able to lead the way.

In periods of frustration, some of the Visteon workers asked, ‘Why do we stay in the union?’ Some expressed the idea of setting up their own union. Other workers, unfamiliar with what a militant union could be like, and unable at this stage to see how a fight to transform the unions could take place, blamed the government rather than the union leadership for their situation. The Visteon struggle has shown that pressure from below can force union leaders to fight. In the face of such brutality by the employer, basic class anger was stirred in this battle. A massacre of jobs is taking place, and union leaders cannot be seen to be completely impotent in the face of this onslaught if they are to maintain their positions at the tops of the unions.

A revolt is brewing in the trade unions and workplaces. Stewards who are unwilling to fight will be pushed aside by a newer, younger generation. Visteon is an expression of this. The conveners of both Basildon and Enfield were new and inexperienced but were prepared to struggle and learn as they did so.

Saving jobs

WHAT THE VISTEON workers have won is a tremendous achievement. The issue of the pensions is still unresolved, to be taken up by a pensions lawyer. And, as the workers well know, the jobs have been lost. In this recession, it will be very difficult for them to find work on similar pay and conditions. The loss of jobs potentially brings with it the loss of homes, cars and lifestyles, and the loss of the collective organisation and camaraderie of the workplace. There is also the loss of the skills of the workforce, which society needs, now thrown on the scrapheap.

The workers at Belfast fought to keep the plant open. But, at this stage, the overall majority of the workers at the three plants did not feel able to fight on to save the jobs. Many, particularly at Belfast, thought their plants were viable. But they were relatively small workplaces and the struggle for jobs is at an early stage. The workers also did not clearly see how the jobs could be saved.

The Socialist Party demanded that Ford should take the plants back but, if they were not prepared to do so, that the government should take them over. Workers were sympathetic to this idea but did not see it as achievable. However, this battle is at the start of a process. Examples of similar battles, while well-known (Lindsey, Waterford Crystal, Prisme), are few at the moment. But the Visteon dispute is now a factor in encouraging other workers to struggle. Corus workers in Redcar, facing the closure of their factory with the loss of 2,000 jobs, are looking at Visteon for inspiration. At a later stage, as the spectre of mass unemployment hits home, further and more widespread battles could take place. In the context of more heightened struggle, the demand to nationalise companies will be seen to be more achievable and will be taken up by workers more widely.

The demand to nationalise the factories under democratic workers’ control and management, especially in industries like the car industry, will need to be linked to a programme to switch to alternative production. The valuable skills of those workers are not limited to making cars. As part of a plan of production they could be switched to other products that society needs. Workers at Enfield, for example, raised the idea that their factory, with plastic moulding equipment used to make dashboards, could be retooled to make wheelie bins.

A few months ago, the majority of Visteon workers would never have imagined that they would occupy or picket their factories. They did not see themselves as militants and readily admit that they had ignored demonstrations and pickets. Conditions forced them to fight.

They now say they will never walk past a picket again. Several of the workers want to continue to offer solidarity to other workers in struggle, and to take part in the newly-formed united left in Unite to play a part in fighting to transform the union. The workers are angry that the Labour government has maintained the Tory anti-trade union laws, and blame Labour for the ease with which workers in Britain can be sacked, demanding changes in employment law.

For the majority, this has also led them to conclude that New Labour is no different from the Tories. Many think that Unite should stop funding New Labour and agree with the idea that they should use that money to campaign for a new workers’ party. When others have argued that workers should join New Labour to try to change it, many rightly respond that it is too late for that. There has been a good deal of interest in the No2EU-Yes to Democracy initiative, with the conveners at Basildon and Enfield standing as No2EU candidates in the euro elections.

The vicious actions of the Visteon bosses turned these workers’ lives upside down. As a consequence, their ideas have changed dramatically as well. But the Visteon bosses are no different from their counterparts throughout Britain. And the Visteon workers are not either.

The IWW was a radical socialist union movement in the early part of the last century. It opposed the First World War.

You ask me why the IWW is not patriotic to the United States.

If you were a bum without a blanket; if you had left your wife and kids when you went west for a job, and had never located them since; if your job had never kept you long enough in a place to qualify you to vote; if you slept in a lousy, sour bunkhouse, and ate food just as rotten as they could give you and get by with it; if deputy sheriffs shot your cooking cans full of holes and spilled your grub on the ground; if your wages were lowered on you when the bosses thought they had you down; if every person who represented law and order and the nation beat you up, railroaded you to jail, and the good Christian people cheered and told them to go to it, how in hell do you expect a man to be patriotic?

This war is a businessman’s war, and we don’t see why we should go out and get shot in order to save the lovely state of affairs that we now enjoy.