The worsening of living conditions has generated a wave of workers’ strikes in the middle of summer. It is the prelude to “the perfect storm” that is forecast for the fall.
By Rubén Tzanoff
Just over a month ago we published the article “European airports: strikes do not take vacations,” where we gave an account of important struggles of workers in various countries. From that moment until now, the living conditions of the great majority have worsened and the labor movement is responding in force.
United Kingdom: Collapse next to the Big Ben
Historic transport strikes have started a new round of protests on London’s trains and metro. Doctors, lawyers, mail carriers, airline employees, airport workers and lawyers are also threatening to strike. They have plenty of reasons to fight. Inflation exceeds 10%, taxes are the highest in seventy years. Gas and electricity bills will reach 600 euros per month per household and millions of people will not be able to pay them. Meanwhile, the Tory Party is taking its time choosing Boris Johnson’s replacement between two other right-wing politicians: Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. The new prime minister will be chosen in an undemocratic way, within the four walls of the Conservative Party, without appealing to the population, not even with general elections.
France: August with a wave of struggle
In the middle of summer and vacations a true wave of strikes is developing. Among others we can mention: the SETRAM bus network in Le Mans and its metropolis, the Auxerrois waste collectors, the Air Calédonie cabin staff, the SNCF staff in the Occitanie area and the Toulouse-Narbonne line, the Divia transport service, the staff of the National Union of Outdoor Sports Centers of the Alps, the lifeguards and technical agents of the municipal swimming pools of Paris, the workers of the reception center of Bagnolet, the midwives of the Center Hospitalier Public du Colentin in Cherbourg, the nurses at Disneyland Paris, the security guards at Saint-Exupéry Airport, the auxiliaries of the AVEC group home in Sarreguemines and the employees of the Siniat factory in Mazan.
Spain: strike, demonstrations and trade union debate at Iberia Express
At the end of June the strikes of the Spanish workers of the Irish low cost company Ryanair began. To try to deactivate them, the employers made an agreement with the Workers’ Commissions (CC. OO.), which has no presence in the sector, supposedly to advance “improvements in working and salary conditions” while they prepare a new agreement. The Workers’ Trade Union (USO), with a majority among the workers, rejected it as “insufficient” and “extra-statutory.” And now it has announced strikes and a calendar of mobilizations between August 28 and September 6, for the negotiation of a new collective agreement. The UGT and CC.OO. federations play a very negative role by refusing to support and unite the struggles.
What is happening is just the tip of the iceberg
It is necessary to respond to today’s struggles and prepare to face what is to come. In Europe, inflation climbs to historical values, consumes salaries and pensions. There are restrictions on the use of energy and shortages of some products, with the war in Ukraine as a backdrop. And, even if they do not recognize it, there is a climate emergency. The very high temperatures cause drought, crop failures, low water levels in the swamps and terrifying forest fires. For this reason, on September 10 and 11, the ISL will hold an online International Socio-environmental Conference in which you can participate.
Hot summer: in degrees Celsius and in social temperature
The “perfect storm” of economic and social crisis that many analysts predicted for the fall has been anticipated. The governments, be they Macron, Sánchez or whoever comes to power in the United Kingdom, promote austerity measures to make the working people pay the consequences of the crisis. Businessmen and union bureaucrats endorse them. The end of the summer vacations will mark the beginning of more difficult times in which the class struggle will have the last say.
Support the struggles and demand a general strike
With the crisis of the capitalist economy exacerbated by the pandemic and deepened by the war, the living conditions of the workers and the people are deteriorating at great speed. Inflation is liquefying wages, pensions and social assistance. Meanwhile, the governments, the bosses and the leaders of the major trade union confederations maneuver “as a team” to favor the bosses’ profits and curb the workers’ demands. For this reason, it is necessary that the demands for struggle from the union leaders not stop there: on this path, a new union leadership must be forged. An emergency transitional program is needed, built from below, in workers’ assemblies that debate and decide their own agenda of demands and struggle aimed at ensuring that the crisis be paid by the capitalists.
New political alternatives are needed
The disasters and betrayals of the old bosses’ parties, of the reformists, social democrats and Stalinists, pose an urgent task: to advance in the regrouping of the revolutionary socialists to build anti-capitalist alternatives, of class independence and support for the workers and people’s mobilization. The commitment of the comrades of the ISL in Europe is to put themselves at the service of these tasks.