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Workers' Liberty
the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class Workers Liberty Australia |
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Workers' Liberty calls on all readers to support and promote the ACTU ban on trade with Fiji, organised in solidarity with the hard-pressed Fijian trade union movement.
Fiji's peak union body called a general strike soon after the Speight coup, demanding the restoration of the elected parliamentary government. It suspended the strike - unwisely, so events have shown - on an appeal from President Ratu Mara, but restarted in the first week of June. The multi-racial government overthrown by the Speight coup, though not socialist, was based on the Labour Party, which is tied to the union movement, and had introduced some pro-worker reforms.
There is a lot we do not know about the background to the coup. But, whatever the grievances of indigenous Fijians - and Speight has been much longer on general racist rhetoric against Fiji's large Indian minority than on specific material issues and proposals - military rule by the almost-100%-indigenous-Fijian army, or the reimposition of explicit racist rules barring Indo-Fijians from top posts in Fiji, will not help.
If Fiji loses its cultural diversity, and the skills and energies of the Indo-Fijian people, that will be not only a human tragedy for the Indo-Fijians, but also a social, cultural and economic disaster for the indigenous Fijians. Consistent, multicultural democracy, and an improvement in conditions for both Indian and indigenous Fijian workers and farmers at the expense of big (mostly international) capital - that is the only way forward. And the organised working-class movement is the only force able to win it.
Both anti-Indian racism, and the anti-indigenous-Fijian racism visible in the Australian media (and some Indo-Fijian comments) are poison. International working-class action is the only reliable ally for Fiji's organised workers in their fight for democracy. Capitalist governments dislike the coup, but their sanctions and measures will be aimed only at making Fiji safe for profit-making, not at democracy.
An ironic lesson in the nature of big-power "peace-keeping" is given by the fact that the coup-making Fijian army has one third of its soldiers away on UN peace-keeping missions! Who peace-keeps the peace-keepers?
One morning I woke up to discover that millions of Indians heeded a trade union call and held one of the largest general strikes in history the day before. I didn't find that out in my morning newspaper or on TV - I learned it from the extensive coverage that was prepared last night by volunteer LabourStart correspondents in the Asia-Pacific region. When I went to check on Yahoo's "Business and Labor News" page, which is updated daily by their paid, professional staff, there was no mention of a strike which involved literally millions of workers. There was, however, some coverage of the actors' strike in the USA, which has halted production of television commercials.
When I saw that, I understood a fundamental difference between the work we are doing on the LabourStart project and how the mainstream media work. Our network of more than 60 correspondents has created something which has never existed before in the trade union movement: a global online news service, continuously updated 24 hours a day.
This week we saw three extraordinary examples of one of labour's most powerful tools at work: the general strike. Norway, South Africa and India were all shut down by increasingly militant trade unions. The wide geographic diversity of the strikes - and the common ground of all of them - could not have failed to escape the attention of our readers.
For comprehensive coverage of all three strikes, check out: http://www.labourstart.org/india/ ; http://www.labourstart.org/southafrica ; http://www.labourstart.org/norway .
Eric Lee coordinates www.labourstart.org. Labourstart's coverage of Fiji is at http://www.labourstart.org/fiji .
As we go to press the more independent of the two major Korean trade union confederations has launched a general strike with tens of thousands of unionists involved. Even before the strike was officially started one of the demands was met, with the Korean Airlines flight crew union being granted legal status. Korean President Kim Ad Jung also announced that his government would study ways of introducing a shorter work week.
The following is an (edited) statement issued by the Korean Congress of Trade Unions (KCTU) before the strike began. The main demands are:
On May 29, 2000, two days before the scheduled general strike, the KCTU President Dan Buying-ho, accompanied by the leaders of the KCTU affiliate federations, announced the plan to launch a general strike on May 31. President Dan declared, "the only thing that will move the KCTU to rethink the planned general strike is for President Kim Ad Jung to declare the intent of the government to amend the current labour to reduce the current statutory working hours to 40 hours a week, thus introducing a five day working week".
The KCTU expects more than 100,000 of the KCTU members to go on strike on May 31. It will involve some 150 to 200 local (enterprise level) unions. KCTU unions have taken the prerequisite steps to undertake a fully legal strike in compliance with the requirements of the current labour laws. The KCTU called on its member unions to file for mandatory mediation by May 20. Currently 219 unions involving a total of 174,000 members have filed for mediation. Following the mandatory "cooling off" period, the unions have undertaken a strike ballot - the next step in legal compliance. As of May 29, a total of 185 unions with a total membership of 138,000 members have undertaken a strike ballot and approved the plan to strike. The KCTU general strike is expected to be led by the members of the Korean Metal Workers Federation. 50 unions with a total membership of 60,000 have voted to strike. Some thirty branches of the National Health and Medical Industry Workers Union, involving some 15,000 members in hospitals, have voted to strike. Individual enterprise unions which will strike as a part of the KCTU general strike include those at some of the major enterprises in the private and public sectors.
The Korean Air Pilots Union - which has been fighting for months for union recognition - will strike from 6 a.m. May 31 as a part of the KCTU general strike if the Ministry fails to issue a certificate of union registration in recognition of the union by 6 p.m. May 30. The union completed its strike ballot on May 28: Out of the 1,247 members, 1,165 took part in the vote. 1,128 (98.1%) supported the strike, while only 22 voted against. If there is no response from the government the KCTU's general strike will begin without any further deliberation.
All the KCTU leaders - at the national centre, led by President Dan Byung-ho, at the KCTU affiliated federations, KCTU regional councils, and local enterprise unions - will begin an emergency overnight sit in from May 29 to oversee the final preparation for the general strike. On May 30, the KCTU will hold an emergency leaders' council - involving the elected leaders of all affiliated federations - to fine tune the plan for the general strike. At the same time, the members of the Livestock Farmers Cooperative Staff Union from throughout the country will converge on Seoul to take part in the general strike.
On the first day of the general strike on May 31, KCTU will hold a public rally in Seoul and 14 other major cities across the country. In the Seoul rally, more than 30,000 workers are expected to take part to call on the government to accept the KCTU demands. The rally will be followed by a march in the streets of Seoul, to end at the Myongdong Cathedral. On June 1, the second day of the general strike, the KCTU affiliated federations will hold separate protest action in designated points in the major cities. In Seoul, the Korean Federation of Transportation, Public & Social Services Workers Unions will hold its protest rally in front of the government's Ministry of Planning and Budge. Similar federation activities will be held on June 2, the third day of the general strike.
On the fourth day, KCTU irregular workers rally will be held in downtown Seoul. This will lead into a night of action in preparation for the National Workers Rally to Win the General Strike, the next day. On Sunday, June 4, the fifth day of the general strike, KCTU will organise a national workers rally where more than 50,000 striking workers are expected to participate. KCTU will make arrangements for further action. Part of the strike program is the second national people's rally 2000 on June 10 where people's organisations, such as, the KCTU, the National Federation of Farmers Associations, and 30 others will join together to put the general people's demands to the government.
KCTU has put another agenda to the government to respond. The government has failed to respond to the other demands.
Restoration of the Damage Caused by the Economic Crisis and the Employer Abuse
The economic crisis has given employers extraordinary powers to abuse the good will of workers. While workers and ordinary people responded to the crisis by accepting wage cuts and foregoing wage payment - as indicated by the decline in the real and nominal wages over the period of the crisis - the employers have used the crisis as an opportunity to downgrade and destroy the integrity of collective bargaining agreements. As a result, such crucial collective agreement provisions as consultation or prior agreement on employment adjustment were ignored with abandon. The employers have exploited the uncertainty of the crisis to destroy unions and to beat back the decade of achievement of the trade union movement. In response, the KCTU has demanded a restoration of the legal efficacy of the collective bargaining process and agreement. Furthermore, the KCTU had called for the restoration of the damage to the rights and welfare of workers wreaked in the period of the economic crisis.
Included in this demand is the call to stop the government plan to sell of Daewoo Motors to an overseas operator. The decision was part of the crisis management plan to sell off every possible asset to obtain foreign currency to restock the depleted foreign currency reserve. The KCTU has rejected the validity of this kind of crisis management plan as it augurs a long term damage to the Korean economy. Nevertheless, the government has pursued blindly its plan to private public enterprises and to sell off as much as possible everything that foreign buyers wish to buy. The plan was not based on any in-depth or extensive examination of the long term industrial and employment consequences. The typical of this decision was the decision to sell off the Daewoo Motors to an overseas operator.
Legal Protection for Atypical Workers, Consolidation of Social Security and Taxation
The economic crisis has brought to the fore a crucial negative development in the labour market. The crisis was seen as an opportunity for employers to replace regular employees with non-regular employees and thus exploit cheap labour. During the crisis, regular employees who were laid off - in response to the unilateral one-size-fits-all directive of the government to reduce the workforce by 30% in public enterprises - were re-hired the next day to continue their work as if nothing had changed. But what was changed was their contract status and with it their wage levels, security, and benefits.
Large number of enterprises have turned to the use of "atypical" employment to exploit cheap labour. The crisis has also revealed the total inadequacy of the social security system in Korea. A social security system is not only a social safety net which can assist the society to absorb the shock of a crisis, but also, more importantly a system, institution, and value-expression of social solidarity. A well-functioning social security-welfare system requires a carefully designed and implemented taxation system. In response, the KCTU has called for a consolidated institutional protection for those workers in atypical jobs, so that the need for "flexibility" on the part of employers is not turned into a weapon of exploitation of workers.
Furthermore, the KCTU has called for a general overhaul and redesigning of the taxation system to finance a robust social security system which will administer a genuine welfare redistribution, instilling a spirit and institution of social solidarity. The government has failed to respond to any of these basic demands of the KCTU. Instead, it has turned to attack the KCTU for going on a general strike. This is not a responsible stance a government can take towards the valid, legitimate, and justified demands of the trade union movement. The KCTU has proposed to the government - the Ministry of Labour, the Office of Prime Minister and the Office of the President - on a number of times to hold discussions and negotiations over these demands.
Despite the repeated expression of the KCTU to cooperate with the government in its preparation for the inter- Korea summit if the government makes a categorical declaration to take action to change the law to establish a five day working week, the government has refused to make any new measures and gestures. [KCTU has committed itself to pull out the Korean Air Pilots Union from the general strike if the government issues the certificate of union registration in the spirit to minimise the impact on the comfort of the general public].
The SBSI, the strongest of the new independent trade union federations in Indonesia with over one million members, sees itself as part of the "social movement", not just an outfit bargaining on industrial wages and conditions.
At a meeting in Brisbane on 10 May, Rekson Silaban, one of two SBSI leaders on a speaking tour of Australia, explained that the SBSI has keenly sought links with the democratic oppositions in Malaysia, Burma and the Philippines.
SBSI chair Muchtar Pakpahan reported that the last congress of the union federation decided to maintain its sponsored political party, the National Labour Party. The NLP was declared in 1998. It got the biggest vote of the various left and workers' parties in Indonesia's June 1999 elections, but failed to win any seats in Parliament. Pakpahan reported that he had asked SBSI members why they hadn't voted NLP. They replied that they had voted for the PDI-P of Megawati Sukarnoputri, who is now vice president - although the PDI-P does not even pretend to represent working-class interests - because they wanted to defeat the old ruling party, Golkar, before all else.
Pakpahan now chairs a liaison committee for Social Democracy, including seven small parties and some trade unions and student unions. The NLP may continue or merge into a new broader party.
Muchtar Pakpahan became an opposition activist as a student in 1974. In 1976, qualified in law, he became "the first labour lawyer in Indonesia". He continued his work despite death threats. In 1986 he moved to the capital, Jakarta, and started a law office there. After a request for help from bus drivers, he helped them build a union. In 1992 he started the SBSI. Pakpahan was jailed for four years, but the union survived.
Despite their appreciation of the fundamental idea that the working class needs its own organisations, both trade-union and political, and must develop its own ideas about the whole range of social issues as well as wages and work conditions, the detailed policies of the SBSI and the NLP are of a moderate, mixed-economy type. Rekson Silaban explained that the SBSI rejects the idea of Indonesian workers making sacrifices to pay down the country's $157 billion foreign debt. Most of that money went to Suharto and his cronies. They should pay.
On jobs, the SBSI line is that government policy should favour labour-intensive industries. The SBSI has helped set up 627 small workers' cooperatives, and seeks government money to set up more of the same to create more jobs. On wages, the SBSI argues for minimum wages measured as social "living wages" rather than on a physical-subsistence standard. They wanted minimum wages to be defined, industry by industry, through tripartite agreements (government-bosses-unions).
Asked what he thought of Indonesia's new president, Abdurrahman Wahid, Muchtar Pakpahan replied that he had friendly personal relations with Wahid before he became president. Now that Wahid is president, however, he is surrounded by military officials, and union leaders can't get to speak to him.
And on the current debate in Indonesia about lifting the 1965 ban on the Communist Party, Pakpahan commented that he thought that the ban was wrong, but it would be foolish to lift it "too quickly".
The great importance of Australian workers developing links with movements like the SBSI was explained by Jeff Rickertt, one of the speaking-tour organisers, in an opening speech on 10 May. About 350 Australian companies, including such giants as BHP, CSR, Telstra and the Commonwealth Bank, have a permanent presence in Indonesia. Globalisation is weaving an ever-more complex web of economic links between different countries. One response to that process is the nationalist one: buy Australian, curb imports. That response is not economically viable; it gives succour to racists; and it divides workers. The other, and better, response is the internationalist one of building links between workers across nationalist borders - "counter-globalisation", or "workers' globalisation".
To contact the SBSI International Department: email email sbsi@pacific.net.id ; fax (+62) 021 470 7416; phone (+62) 021 472 1618; address Jl Pemuda No 289, Jakarta 13220.
May Day in Berlin was very different from the average May Day in an Australian capital city. This eyewitness report gives a snapshot of the labour movement and the left in the capital of Germany. For some background, see the book review that follows.
We assembled at the Berlin DGB (equivalent of ACTU) at the town hall, which is the centre of the old East Berlin at which four different demonstrations were assembling. One was with 'IG Metall' (the engineering union), another was OeTV (the public services union) and a couple of others. The four together constitute a representation of half of Germany's unions, given that Germany has eight meg-unions, soon to be reduced to just three. We went on the IG Metall march, the majority of people of whom were Kurdish and Turkish Maoists. Also present were the SPD-YS (young socialists of the SPD) flying red flags and driving a van playing Sex Pistols songs in German. Just to note the contrast, the Turkish Maoists were playing songs by Brett/Well tunes... The left were otherwise absent from the march.
When we arrived at our destination in Alexanderplatz, the square was full of Maoists, steins of beer and piles of sausages. Stalls included BMW Berlin displaying the parts of motorbikes and cars; the union's leaflets about job losses were hidden behind these displays.
It was hard to tell whether these displays were for the union itself or BMW on a promo tour. The Volkswagen stall looked much the same. Parts of cars were being displayed on tables, but clearly not with the same nice posters of racing bikes like at BMW. There were also a range of stalls organised by a variety of left wing political groups but interestingly no social democrats or representatives of the mainstream German United Secretariat Trotskyist group, the RSB.
We listened to a female bureaucrat from the IG Bau (Building Workers Union, Environment and Agriculture).
She gave a left-wingish sort of speech: "the government must support 'employees', social partnerships etc". She was also careful to include the DGB's new promo mantra a couple of times, which is conspicuously advertised around Berlin, and translates into, "Who, if not us?" We had wondered if this was supposed to mean "Who but the DGB, will destroy any residual working-class militancy?", but apparently this highly vague slogan is supposed to mean something like, "who will protect you but the union".
The highly racist IG Bau, interestingly, had no stall of their own, just many fundraising stalls selling beer and sausages. The police held a huge stall present, the intention of which seemed to be to appear generally friendly in anticipation of the night's activities. Amazingly, promo postcards with pictures of cops lending helping hands to fallen rollerblading youths did not prevent the riot...
The PDS (ex-East-German CP) had their own rally over the other side of Alexanderplatz at which their leader (who is presently standing down) Gregor Gysi made a speech before about 500 people, mainly pensioners and quite a few youth. At the same time, there was also a festival in Marianenplatz in Kreuzberg (the place of the riot) organized by the Greens and the PDS together which was supposed to be an alternative to the trade unions' demo/beer fest. We headed over there after the trade unions' demo.
We marvelled at how obviously well financed 'Anti-Fascist Action Berlin' are with their expensive advertising. Their T-shirts sale included T-shirts with the Nike symbol and the word "riot" written underneath it... Most people from this gathering moved down to Oranienplatz at 6pm where the huge 10,000-people Anti-Fascist Action Berlin demonstration was to assemble.
So after assembling, representatives from Anti-Fascist Action Berlin, who had control of the announcing stage and a machine into which they spoke in order to change the pitch of their voices and thus disguise them, announced triumphantly that the political section of the demo had just had it sound equipment confiscated by the police. They gloated. Everyone cheered. Apparently this confiscation would mean that "unity" would not be undermined by the mere discussing of politics. Then a huge semi-trailer with speakers on it started driving along playing dance music and everyone walked behind it. We handed out a leaflet about the Berlin teachers' strike a few weeks ago. Given the tone of the demo set by the Anti-Fascist Action, we were rather surprised to find that nearly everyone took our leaflet, many people stopped to take our leaflet and read it immediately, and we soon ran out of approx. 1500 leaflets.
The march was ridiculously long and highly conspicuous undercover police joined us all the way. When we got as far as Kottbuser Tor tube stop, the police stopped the demonstration (someone apparently threw a bottle), and from where we were (at the back of the march), it was obvious the water cannon had just been set off as thousands of people started running towards us. There was CS gas in the water, as we had the delight of discovering. It was not the only the local police present, but 6400 police in total of which a large part were from around Germany. So to cut a long farce short, small shops, phone boxes, bus stops, rubbish bins, police vans etc were smashed, including a workshop for blind people. This went on for another 6 hours or so, as the police attempted to split up the demo into smaller sections.
As Kreuzberg was completely sealed off and all the tube stops closed, we had the surreal experience of sitting in a cafe drinking a coffee to wait it out along with heaps of other people whilst 20 metres away from us the police were charging down the street with riot shields and a helicopter was spotlighting the block of flats in front of us. It was like we were on the set of a movie.
For your extra information, 800 fascists marched out in Hellesdorf (they were legally allowed) and 400 anti-fascists were also present there (who were not legally allowed). But we did not attend this demo ourselves.
Comradely,
Melissa and Matt