#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #SPAIN #UK #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Spain, CNT-AITAnarchosyndicalisme! n°178: Strike in #Britain (ca, de, it, fr, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Translation of a text by our companions from the AIT section in Great Britain, on

the current wave of wildcat strikes which is inflaming the United Kingdom, which
is entirely transposable to the situation in France. ---- Across the UK there is
now renewed optimism and public alignment with the movement for increased
workers' rights, union rights, wage increases and general improvements in
conditions of work. While, for the vast majority of people in the country, wages
and salaries are not only stagnating but even facing a real pay cut, the top 1%
are the only group whose economic position is rising. But that's still the way -
that's how Capitalism works - especially the model of financialized, neoliberal
Capitalism that we live in today, which restricts workers' bargaining rights,
destroys the public sector and tends towards a dystopian society where all
services, all social relations and all ideas are commodified - what politicians
of all persuasions, whether Conservative, Liberal Democrat or 'Labour' (left)
call 'modernisation'.

Action is being taken or proposed by workers and their unions in transport (RMT,
ASLEF), health (BMA, Unison), education (NEU, NASUWT), Council workers, Post
(Royal Mail), Open Reach/Broadband workers, list growing over time as conditions
worsen with no negotiation offered. Some of the worst pay cuts in real terms show
junior doctors taking a 22% pay cut since 2008-09, along with even lower paid
nurses. The latter have announced that they will leave if their request for a
salary increase of 5% on top of inflation is not granted. "But - according to The
Independent newspaper - the government has so far asked to cap any wage increase
for 2022-2023 at 3%." This illustrates the essential collaboration between the
state and its capitalist allies, both of whom are dependent on each other for the
maintenance and pursuit of the neoliberalization of society.

This "cost of living crisis" is not new - for the vast majority of people there
has always been a cost of living crisis under capitalism. Members of the middle
and upper classes did not experience having to choose between "warming up or
eating" as a terrifying existential choice that you face on a daily basis.
However, it is true that things are getting exponentially worse for workers -
both due to unforeseen factors such as the pandemic and the disruption of supply
chains for essential goods that the war in Ukraine brings, but also, more
importantly, concerted and targeted efforts by the ruling class and the political
system they profit from and exploit, to further aggravate the plight of working
people. By refusing the rights to collective action against employers, by
de-funding social services, they apply the "classics" of the book of Thatcherite
commandments.

It is the fundamental understanding of any anti-capitalist or class-conscious
worker that "Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the rich springs from
the poverty of the poor" (Peter Kropotkin)
The Russian anarcho-communist Kropotkin wrote these words in 1892, and while many
aspects of Capitalism have changed since then, the fundamentals remain the same:
the existence of poverty and the subsidiary position of the working class in
relation to the ruling class is maintained by their exploitation.

And so today we see the ruling class heating up its iron pikes in order to pierce
the working class and its movement for living wages, basic democratic conditions
and rights. It is no surprise that the new unelected Prime Ministers who will be
chosen by Conservative Party members[to replace Boris Johnson]both support a ban
on strikes in essential services such as transport and health, just in when the
biggest wave of strikes in decades is spreading rapidly among the country's
workers. . If such legislation succeeds, it means that the entire workers' rights
movement and trade unions will be pushed into unofficial strike action, to
operate outside the already draconian, restricted and undemocratic limits of what
the state British considers acceptable. with conflicts. For example, striking in
solidarity with another exploited workplace is illegal, while increasing
legalization and increased use of scabs, all to divide and rule the labor
movement, to destroy conflict in their unfolding. Unofficial action, in the face
of an increasingly authoritarian and openly pro-bourgeois system, becomes the
only effective measure against the growing control of the capitalist state.

For many members of the "mainstream" (official / institutional) or reformist
labor movement, acting outside the law is unthinkable. For them, especially
bureaucrats and would-be activists, everything must be done through official
channels, asking their oppressors for permission to demonstrate or showing
respect to archaic institutions and people, to institutions and processes that
this semi-feudal, class, elitist and fundamentally racist system reproduces and
protects.

The workers are not getting a pay rise, while the ruling class is getting an
increase in income, so the workers are responding by mobilizing and uniting. The
ruling class is responding by limiting their rights to such an extreme level that
even the rulers of right-wing banana republics would blush. This is class
warfare, pure and simple. It is class war now, it was already class war since the
post-war years, and it has always been class war from the earliest days of
capitalism proper.

At the Solfed-AIT (Solidarity Federation, Solidarity Federation, section of the
AIT in Great Britain), as anarchosyndicalists, what we will do as we have always
done, is to support the protests that the unions and their workers oppose their
employers. We do not believe that the current model of unions, organized
hierarchically and based on the leadership of a few activists, is the most
effective - because any movement or organization that reproduces the same unequal
divisions of power as capitalist society is doomed to reproduce its unequal
social conditions. As a comrade in SolFed put it: "Union leaders are powerless
unless members organize unofficial grassroots action."

The left must realize this. We did not get the rights we have now because of
legal or peaceful industrial action. The laws were put in place to STOP
unofficial action, that's the only reason union leaders have the power of
mediators: Power expects them to act as direct action speed bumps workers.

As long as we depend on legalized action to win, the government will take away
these rights the second we start using them effectively.

In Great Britain, the obligation made to the trade unions to organize a vote
before the beginning of a strike, and the legal restrictions to this
organization, (number of participants, majority, ...) all that was only the
beginning[to hamper workers' resistance]. At a minimum, even official actions
must be coordinated from below. The government forces us to vote before going on
strike? So in response, we should demand to have the same participation
thresholds when it comes to returning to work! If the decision to end a strike
and return to work were to be voted on at mass meetings, that would give us the
experience to be able to pull these things back when our unions are outlawed.
Union leaders are not just going to cede their power to us, but even they must
see that without this kind of measure, their days as paid union officials are
numbered.
As a starting point, learn how to organize unofficial actions. Find out what kind
of methods we used - flash strike, slow down work, march on the boss... a good
way to do this is to participate in the trainings organized by SolFed for
workplace action organizers .

Therefore, we support all workers in their struggle for better wages, better
conditions and, in the long run, freedom from exploitation. We can see that it is
vital to lead a concerted effort by the labor movement to unite all sectors,
especially against the pole business-government duo and against the quasi-fascist
call of our next potential Prime Minister to ban strikes in the essential
services. The "Labour" (left-wing) party prohibits its representatives from
supporting picket lines or even whispering words like "socialism" or "collective
bargaining". We know that party politics and the whole ideology of relying on the
powerful and officials to protect our rights and livelihoods is a sham.
We need a general strike, a general strike to cripple the power dynamics of
terminal neoliberal capitalism. We need a massive mobilization of workers in
free, non-hierarchical workers' movements, which succeed because of their
autonomy vis-à-vis union representatives, party leaders, etc. SolFed-AIT offers
its full support and solidarity to workers across the country fighting for better
rights, better jobs and better pay.

Source: http://solfed.org.uk/bristol/solidarity-with-workers-on-strike

http://cntaittoulouse.lautre.net/spip.php?article1255
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