From La Forge
Organ of the Communist Party of the Workers of France
July-August 2000
At this 6th International Meeting of Trade Unionists, there were people from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway and Russia.
We exchanged experiences about the daily struggle to oppose the attacks of the bosses, the monopolies and imperialism against the working class and its organizations. We were able to draw lessons from these experiences and they served to develop and reinforce international solidarity. For the working class, which is struggling all over the world, international solidarity is a common force.
The struggle for collective rights
One of the main themes of our discussions was the struggle for the defense of the collective rights of the working class.
We forcefully denounced the repression, persecutions and violence directed against trade unionists around the world.
We are struggling for:
- The fundamental democratic right of the working class to organize into trade unions and to fight for its rights and demands.
- The right to collective agreements and to reject the setting of wages linked to production and flexible hours demanded by the monopolies.
- The development of solidarity across borders, the development of solidarity with the struggle of the working class against the closing of enterprises, privatizations, attacks against wages, hours of work and conditions of work, the dismantling of social benefits and against the ravages of the "new world order."
- Growing opposition and resistance to the reactionary policy common to all the monopolies of the European Union, to the governments and the upper layers of the trade union apparatus. We are against the workers of different countries and regions being made to enter into "free competition" with each other in the name of nationalism.
- The development of concrete solidarity among workers from different groups and different multinationals operating on a world scale.
The struggle against modern slavery
The second main theme of our discussions was dedicated to the struggle against the phenomena which throw entire sectors of the workers into unemployment, into precarious conditions, which prevent them from organizing into trade unions, which subject them to forced labor, which make them second-class workers, and which tear to pieces the minimal rights won by the workers. These phenomena have developed over the last years, the forms vary between countries but the content is identical.
We are struggling for:
- Equal rights, the same rights and increased rights; wages and conditions of work agreed to by contract by all the workers, regardless of age, sex, nationality and conditions of employment. That all workers have the right to unionize.
- The abolition of forced labor imposed by the State and the bosses on the unemployed and those who have been dismissed, forcing the workers to work for low wages and degraded conditions of work, without collective rights. That an end be put to the recourse to "unusual work."
- The development and support of the struggles of the unemployed and those in precarious conditions.
- The development of solidarity between different contingents of the working masses.
The 6th International Meeting of Trade Unionists has decided on a certain number of appeals of solidarity.
The struggle of the workers is international. It is we who create all value and the future. To the offensive of the monopolies, the bosses and their State, to the class collaboration of the trade union bureaucracy, we must respond with unceasing, more resolute struggle of the working class.
The struggle of the working class is consolidating and advancing.
We support the struggles of the peoples against imperialism, in Africa (for example, in Burkina Faso), on the Latin American continent, for example in Colombia and in Ecuador where sharp class confrontations are presently developing.
All real changes come from the rank-and-file.
To bring about real and profound changes, we call upon trade unionists in the enterprises and the trade unions and the unemployed to unite their forces, under the slogan:
All together against capital!
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