By Julio Santana – ISL United Kingdom
The workers have called the strike again. The Government and the Secretary of Transport have said: “We are worried about the users” So much cynicism! They have not moved a finger to respond to the demands for decent wages and defense of jobs. In twelve years of conservative austerity, the promises of a better life were never fulfilled. The increases in the minimum wage were an embarrassment and raises were frozen. How much more time of sacrifice must the people spend to receive the rights that correspond to them? Meanwhile, with each passing day, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
Isn’t it time to extend the fight?
The failure and weakness of the government, with ten candidates proposing more of the same, provides an opportunity for the workers’ and people’s demands to be met. For this reason, other union organizations are also discussing strikes. Isn’t it time for the big unions to support our comrades in transportation, health and education? Isn’t it time they called a general strike? Isn’t it time for the Labor Party, instead of banning the presence of its members on the picket lines, commit itself to concretely supporting the strikers?
Let’s support the transport strike!
If the strike causes difficulties for users, it is not the responsibility of the workers, but rather of the lack of response to their just demands. The truth is that if the transport workers win, we all win. A victory for the strike would strengthen the working class as a whole to bring its own agenda of demands to the fore. That is why the broadest solidarity with the strike is necessary, with pronouncements, posters and support for the pickets. It is time for the crisis to be paid by the capitalists.
A fundamental solution is needed
The transport strike accelerated the times of the fall of Boris Johnson. The powerful “changed a fuse” to avoid a widespread short circuit. And the replacement candidates are equal to or worse than the former prime minister. They are willing to “tighten the belt” of the workers to guarantee the bosses’ profits. No one thinks of consulting the population to decide its own destiny. Nothing must be expected from the leaders of the Conservative and Labor Parties. We have to trust only in ourselves, in the mobilization, to defeat the monarchical-parliamentary regime and fight for a workers’ government and socialism.