The meeting of the National Coordination of the CSP-Conlutas took place last weekend in San Pablo. Below we present an interview we conducted with one of its leaders. Silvia Leticia is a teacher, general coordinator of the Union of Education Workers in the State of Pará (SINTEPP – BELÉM / PA), member of the new National Executive Secretariat (SEN) of the CSP-Conlutas and leader of Socialist Struggle and United to Fight.
Silvia, tell us how it was developed and what insertion does CONLUTAS have in the Brazilian labor movement?
SL: The CONLUTAS Labor and Peoples´ Central was born from a political and union break with the CUT (Central Unica dos Trabalhadores) led mainly by the political organization of former president Lula. Upon assuming the presidency of the republic in 2003, Lula and the PT began to apply measures of fiscal austerity to benefit bankers and agribusiness, attacking workers’ rights. One of these measures was the retirement reform that ended the equality of income between public workers and retirees of the same sector. The CUT, in addition to supporting this attack on the rights of state workers, also supported the end of labor stability in the sector. To address this situation, since the CUT refused to mobilize, several unions and federations organized the National Forum to Struggles agaisnt the reforms of the PT government. The organization of this forum was extended to all Brazilian states and from there emerged the National Coordination of Struggles (Conlutas). In 2010, the CSP-Conlutas (Labor and Peoples´ Central) emerged.
In its first years of existence, the CSP-Conlutas was a very attractive pole for organizing combative and anti-democratic Brazilian trade unionism. From its origin, it sought to organize not only unions of public employees, but also took the initiative in the private sector, trade union oppositions, minorities in trade union boards, and also in movements against oppression and youth.
However, the politics of the leadership (PSTU / LIT) of imposing an undemocratic political orientation in recent years, have caused the Central to stagnate, lose initiative and make important mistakes, such as in the last fight against the government’s retirement reform.
What is your assessment of the last congress and the coordination meeting that has just concluded?
SL: The political opportunities that were missed and the critical assessment that several unions made of the CSP-Conlutas leadership at the last Congress focused precisely on how bad the leadership´s policy towards the fight against Bolsonaro´s retirement reform was. Instead of prioritizing the organization of the rank-and-file in each sector, with a strong condemnation of the government and explaining that if we put up a fight, the government could be defeated, our central was carried away by the CUT´s organization of a forum of labor centrals, whose main objective was to make amendments to the government´s project in the National Congress. This bureaucratic policy led to the government approving the retirement reform in the National Congress without even a street mobilization or general strike on the day it was voted.
However, attributing all the blame for disarming the working class to the majority leadership of the CSP – Conlutas (PSTU) would be a big mistake. Just as can be seen in a large part of the world´s left, a defeatist political current was organized within the central, which was led by the Resistência political and union group (PSTU split) that was of no help in confronting the leadership´s politics. This current has as analysis that there is a conservative wave in the world, that the Bolsonaro government is Bonapartist and that its victory produced a change in the Brazilian political situation unfavorable to workers´ struggles, which is a big mistake. This skeptical and defeatist sector´s line is the complete abandonment of the dispute for the leadership of the mass movement in the country. Its orientation is the construction of united fronts with the labor bureaucracy. Like all labor bureaucracies in the world, ours does not want to mobilize workers, it feeds the illusion in the mass movement that it will return to power in the presidential elections of 2020 through former president Lula, and in the case of his legal impediment, through someone who defends its interests as labor bureaucracy.
Therefore, bureaucratic hegemony and defeatist skepticism have become two faces of the same coin. This opened a very big crisis due to the dispute for the small apparatus of the CSP-Conlutas, leading to sectors that are not aligned with these two currents moving away. In the central´s last congress important political resolutions were voted such as: the fight against the government´s fiscal austerity, the denunciation of the enormous social crisis that affects our country, the denunciation of corruption, the support for the struggles of the indigenous peoples and traditional populations and the defense of the environment, women, Blacks, he LGBTI movement. The construction of a national meeting of the working class for 2020 to organize the struggle against the government and the bosses was also voted.
However, so far, these measures have been merely symbolical, because we are paralyzed without political campaigns. This in the midst of major strikes such as the oil workers´ strike, the strike announced by post office and national education workers for the month of March. We do not have posters, brochures or an agenda for assemblies in the sectors to help propel this calendar very strongly.
The meeting of the National Coordination of the Central that took place between February 14 and 16, was the reproduction on a smaller scale of this dispute, virtually all of the resolutions approved by the last Congress of the CSP – Conlutas were reaffirmed, but we are still paralyzed politically and lacking initiatives.
Your Slate Became the Second Force of the Central. Why This Growth?
SL: Based on these criticisms, the union tendency that I am a part of, UNIDOS PRA LUTAR, which is organized by militants of Luta Socialista / PSOL and independent union activists, decided to make the proposal to build an independent political and union pole opposed to the hegemony of the PSTU and also of the defeatism and skepticism of the Resistência current. Our proposal was to build an alternative of for the internal leadership of the central and the comrades of three more organizations joined us: the Movimento Esquerda Socialista (MES), Liberdade e Revolução Popular (LRP) and Ação Popular Socialista (APS), all political organizations of the PSOL.
We were the second most voted list among the four that were presented, thus becoming the second political force of the central. Luta Socialista / Unidos Pra Lutar will double its presence in the National Executive Secretariat of CSP-Conlutas. We will battle together with the comrades that make up the CSP list Autonomous and Democratic Conlutas for there to in fact be an active political pole of intervention in the class struggle, seeking in all spaces to energize and strengthen the Central as an alternative leadership for the Brazilian labor movement.
What Proposals Does Unidos Pra Lutar Have for the Dispute for the Leadership of the Labor Movement?
SL: First, to build a broad process of mobilization, unification of the struggles in perspective of a general strike against the Bolsonaro / Mourão government. Against the fiscal austerity measures, for a general increase in wages, a reduction in working hours without reducing wages (work less for everyone to work), DIEESE National Salary Floor (1) for all categories of workers, freezing prices of electricity, telephone, water, urban transport, internet, basic food basket products, etc. Second, we want to help the organization of a great national meeting of the working class to allows for the unification at the rank-and-file of each one of the sectors of the Brazilian working class, the city and the country, with the perspective of building a unified plan of struggle and a program of rupture with imperialism, the IMF and at the service of workers and the poor.
1. DIEESE: Interunion Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies, a body responsible for assisting the Brazilian labor and social movement in wage campaigns unlike official government agencies.