#Worldwide #Information #Blogger #LucSchrijvers: #Update: #anarchist #news and #information from all over the #world - 8.01.2020

Today's Topics:

   
1.  France, Union Communiste Libertaire AL #301 - Spotlight,
      Pensions: December 2019, a historic strike (fr, it, pt)[machine
      translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  cnt-sindikatua: Reflections on the General Strike on January
      30 (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  Levante cnt-ait: The campaign continues for the 25-hour
      workday (ca, it) (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  THE HELLENIC TELECOMMUNICATIONS ORGANIZATION 
     (HTO) STRIKE WILL WIN by ANARCHIST FEDERATION 
     (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  US, MACC - January Organizing Assembly: Sunday, January 5th
      @ Woodbine (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1






December 2019 is already entering the history of the social movement. The renewable strike, particularly strong at SNCF and RATP, massively
supported by the population, has returned to the fore. Many other sectors also recorded figures of striking strikers also on certain days.
And, at the end of December, a single watchword: "No Christmas truce". ---- As of December 5, the strike was massive. Largely in the
majority, it affected or even stopped public transport in several cities, in particular in the Paris region, as well as SNCF traffic. Many
schools and other public services have been closed. However, transport and education were not the only sectors affected by the strike.
Hundreds of thousands of workers have crossed their arms. For many, it was their first strike, the first time they had stopped. The
counter-reform of pensions has been the catalyst for anger against all the social setbacks of recent years.

Renew the strike
At SNCF and RATP, union teams had done the job. For more than two months, they have been touring depots and workshops to explain the
counter-reform, to dismantle the government's lies and above all to explain that a single day of strike would not be enough, that the
movement, to be victorious , should last.

It is thanks to this fundamental work, and to the tremendous fighting spirit of the strikers, that the strike was able to take root in a
long time. In National Education, if the strike figures were exceptional on December 5, they fell on the 6th, and even more the following
week. As a result, there were still many strikers on the movement's "high points" days , but very few huts were on strike.

In energy, we could see power cuts operated by agents mobilized regularly, and several refineries were shut down. In the culture sector, in
the food industry and in the local public service, mobilizations have also taken place.

The public's support for this strike has never been denied. It has even increased, despite government propaganda which has spilled all day
long on TV and in the newspapers. Workers, both private and public, are opposed to the government counter-reform, because everyone has
understood that it was used to lower pensions and to fatten private pension funds.

The strike was the central subject of December 2019. In addition to the pressure it puts on the government and on the shareholders, because
it makes them lose money, it also makes it possible to put back at the center of concerns the question of the distribution of wealth, the
question of social inequalities, the question of exploitation at work.

Massive demonstrations also took place, with for example 1.5 million people on the street on December 5, and 1.8 million on December 17,
according to the CGT. They were widely publicized, which also made it possible to show the massive support that this movement met.

Reform unionism routed
Those who are called "reformist unions", that is to say in fact the unions which accompany the destruction of our social conquests, have
been routed. While the government even managed to get rid of the CFDT, the CFDT finally called to mobilize on December 17. But in the
street, his ranks were sparse. Very quickly after, and without having obtained anything, she called a truce for Christmas. The
CFDT-Cheminots opposed it, pushed by a base which was planning to spend Christmas on the stakes. The Unsa also called for a truce, with the
same result: the Unsa-RATP refused it. In truth, the strike movement was too hard, the strikers were too determined to be fooled.

Real difficulties in generalizing the strike
It is a fact: the renewable strike has not been generalized. The rates of strikers were high during the high points of the movement, on
December 5, December 10 and December 17, but the sectors which renewed the strike remained the SNCF and the RATP, and in some departments
the National Education. This must question us. The weakness of our union tools is at the center of the causes. Not only are many union teams
today sluggish and politicized, but entire sectors are union deserts.

In these conditions, if it was possible to carry out punctually good days of strike, the practices which allow to renew it were not there.
Talking, counting, doing GAs, communicating: all these things that are no longer automatic in most work groups, and that make a day of
strikes fall like a bellows. The difficulties of generalizing the strike in concrete terms beyond the front speeches raise the question of
self-organization and the practices which accompany it.

What was lacking, too, were probably sectoral demands that were better constructed and better put forward. The question of pensions has
crystallized anger, but in what boxes has it been made with the difficulties of the sector? With hours, with working conditions, with wages
? To articulate the claims, it is to make a link between the present and the future, between the daily life which tires and the system which
exploits.

Interprofessional solidarity
The movement of December 2019, by its scope and duration, remains however a historic social movement.

It will inevitably have profoundly changed the mindset of hundreds of thousands of workers, showing them that you can say stop to your boss,
stop to social regression. Even showing them that another company is possible, freed from exploitation.

This movement will also have rebuilt workers' solidarity. These solidarities which are destroyed by the organization of work, by the
practices of subcontracting, division of workers. This solidarity, which we have seen expressed on the stakes, expressed in demonstrations,
expressed on social networks too, it is in the struggle that it is renewed. These ties will remain for future struggles. But they will have
to be maintained. And from the beginning of January, continue the fight.

Adèle (UCL Pantin)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Retraites-Decembre-2019-une-greve-historique

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Message: 2






On January 30, 2020, multiple organizations, including CNT, will go on a general strike for decent public pensions. ---- "We call on the
trade union centrals that do not support it, so they can reflect and call a strike," said the anarcho-syndicalist organization. ----
Following the call to strike on January 30, union centrals that do not want to participate in the strike have sent two communications in
which, in the opinion of this union, it is creating confusion and division with the aim of undermining the mobilization that It will be held
at the end of January. ---- The pensioners movement made a round of contacts in mid-2019 with unions and social movements, to assess the
possibility of a general strike in defense of public pensions. From CNT they were told that such a dynamic was necessary, that one had to go
one step further. The strike call was in the hands of the trade union organizations.

Now we have a date to try to make this mobilization historic. It is not the time to look for excuses to remain immobile: in addition to the
current situation of pensioners, it is our future, that of the workers, that is at stake. We want a public and decent pension system, in
which the affected people can decide on it, without leaving it in the hands of politicians on duty, the Toledo Pact or similar.

One of the key issues raised by the pensioners movement is the repeal of labor reforms, which from CNT (and the other calling unions) is
supported and demanded. Are the unions that do not support the strike against it?

Our proposal to these trade union organizations is simple: we make a sincere call to responsibility. If you agree with the requests of the
pensioners movement, call strike on January 30. There are no excuses.

http://www.cnt-sindikatua.org/index.php/es/todas-las-noticias/1603-reflexiones-en-torno-a-la-huelga-general-del-30-de-enero.html

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Message: 3






With the intention of gaining ground in the capital, the CNT-AIT Levante has launched a campaign demanding the reduction of the working day
to 25 hours without salary reduction. At the moment the day is in 40 hours, however, the abuses towards the working class are more and more
evident, endless days are worked with fraudulent contracts and misery wages. We cannot expect anything from its laws that only pretend to
regulate precariousness, laws at the service of a criminal and exploitative economic system such as the capitalist, whose sole objective is
to obtain benefits over human rights and natural ecosystems. ---- The struggles for the reduction of the working day is an old vindication
of the labor movement that has on the one hand the objective of improving the living conditions of the working class, and on the other,
reducing power to capital.

Join the fight against class society and the capitalist productive system.

ORGANIZE AND FIGHT.

https://levantecntait.wordpress.com/2020/01/04/continua-la-campana-por-la-jornada-laboral-de-25-horas/#more-795

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Message: 4





For a while now, the workers of HTO have made a decision to begin a series of strikes despite HTO’s administration’s provocative claims that
the strike is illegal and abusive. The long standing strike has been in effect since the 21st of December in all Greek territory, fighting
for demands such as the establishment of collective labor agreements, raises in wages and the lifting of employee terminations. ---- HTO is
among the first class tech companies in the Greek business environment as well as in the financial market, so it couldn’t not have a
prevalent position as a modern sweat shop. ---- This group is responsible for the intensification and the over-exploitation of a large
workforce, a number of work “accidents”, the attempted annulment of collective labor agreements (by suggesting one-year agreements), a
number of vindictive employee dismissals for not confronting to signing their “voluntary” release as ordered by the administration, abusive
employment and slaughtering of many employees’ wages all in favor of quick and easy capitalist profit. At this point it is important the
note that between 2012 and 2018, HTO’s workers’ productivity increased by 55% while the wage cost declined by the same rate while the large
shareholders publicly announced that their profits had increased by more than three-fold (operational profit increased by 88%).

It is then obvious that the increase in the profits of the shareholders and the blood-stained primary surplus that they demand go hand in
hand with the resilience in labor relations, the attack on labor rights, acquired liberties, the depreciation of the values of the
workforce, the lack of protective measures and the non-compliance with basic employer safety rules by the employers as well as the
criminalization of workers’ struggles and the intimidation of union members. In accordance with the situation explained above, it is worth
noting that a workplace “accident” occurred on the 5th of December.

An HTO field technician was found completely unconscious in front of a service box by passersby in the Kolonaki neighborhood. In one of the
city’s most crowded spots, he remained helpless and on the ground for over half an hour. His life however wouldn’t depend on the basic
humanity of the passersby if he wasn’t a single man crew, with no second person to help him, as explicitly stated by the law.

He remained hospitalized, intubated and in critical condition for a few days at the Intensive Care Unit in the Central Clinic of Athens. The
logic behind two-man crews is simple. In a profession with fatal accidents, there cannot be people working alone. The logic, then, behind
sending one-man crews is that the company can save a day’s salary.

A few days before the aforementioned workplace “accident”, another worker in Koutselio of Ioanina (also a one-man crew) was injured after
falling off of a power pole which collapsed as he was working on it.

The employer, instead of taking responsibility for the accident, ordered the collapsed power pole to be removed (so as to not be found by
labor inspection) and replaced with a new one! According to HTO’s official data, reported workplace accidents in 2018 numbered at 113!

This tells us that there was a workplace accident every other day! Often times the workers keep to themselves and avoid raising the voice
and reporting their experience on the dangerous and exhaustive working conditions under the threat of a vindictive dismissal. The employer
threatens the workers that the could at any time become cheap working hands for contracting companies such as INTRAKAT, INTRACOM, AKTOR (it
is not just the issue of one-man working crews that makes HTO a modern sweat shop). Time and time again the tragic downgrading in issues
like the protection of the health and safety of the workers.

The intensification of work, the stress that comes with the evaluation process, the constant pressure by the executives drives more and more
workers into suffering strokes and cardiac arrests.

The performance of the workers is measured in real time, causing them unbearable pressure. Adding to that the fact that workers have to have
daily encounters with infuriated customers, who are ignored for weeks because of the huge workload and the tragic lack of staff. Through all
of this, the employees are to be calm while being cursed at and threatened by the customers.

They do not apply the labor legislation, they don’t care about the penalties imposed by the labor inspection for one-man crews, they drain
the workers and all that for increasing the profits of DeutscheTelekom but also for their premiums and benefits. Also, on 31/12/2019 8
guards are scheduled to be fired.

HTO’s administration and Managing Director Michael Tsamaz are the ones responsible. And just to mention that this gentleman’s salary was
1.48 million euros last year and this year increased to 1.62 million euros.

Enforce the decision for two-man crews now! No more threats of dismissals by the employers! Support the strike at HTO, a strike that is
systematically ignored by the media because of fear of loss of commercial breaks! Lift all of the dismissals, immediately establish
three-year collective labor agreements for all workers!

ANARCHIST FEDERATION GREECE

site: http://www.anarchist-federation.gr

email: anarchist-federation@riseup.net

twitter: https://twitter.com/anarchistfedGr

fb: http://facebook.com/anarxikiomospondia2015

facebook.com/greekresistancebulletin/posts/1657294941078414

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Message: 5






...7PM - 9PM 1882 Woodbine Street, Ridgewood ---- The Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council (MACC) will be holding an organizing
assembly this week  at Woodbine, 1882 Woodbine St. in Ridgewood. Please attend and invite your friends and comrades. Organizing assemblies
are open to all of those who have participated in MACC working groups or general assemblies! If you can't arrive on time, feel free to come
late. ---- The organizing assembly is MACC's primary decision making body and deals with the nuts and bolts of MACC as an organization and
its infrastructure. These assemblies are a forum where we explore and attempt to address the wider needs of MACC and the anarchist movement
in NYC. We also use these meetings to set the agenda and the tone for general assemblies ("GAs" ), and to check in with working groups.

The next General Assembly will be on Friday, January 10th at Verso Books. There will be an orientation at 6:30pm and the assembly will begin
at 7:00pm.

Thanks and we hope to see you there!

Both the Organizing Assembly and General Assembly are great places to get involved with new and ongoing working groups. You can see a list
of groups on our wiki. Come to a meeting or email us to learn more.
Burning Frame Presents:

Our monthly anarchist films series continues with a screening of "Man's Castle" January 5th, 7:30-10 (after the Organizing Assembly). Join
us at Spectacle Theater. Details in link.

Free David Campbell
Defend and Support Our Imprisoned Anti-fascist Comrade

Join our monthly bookclub! We'll be discussing The Unreal and the Real by Ursula Leguin on Sunday, January 19th, 4pm-6pm at Bluestockings
Bookstore, 172 Allen Street (facebook event).

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