Two Articles
Madrid subway shut down by mass strike
by Alex Lantier
30 June 2010
Striking train drivers shut down the Madrid subway yesterday, ignoring minimum service rules imposed by the Madrid regional government. Traffic jams rapidly spread throughout the city. The subway network carries 2 million passengers daily; bus and taxi services were overwhelmed as commuters tried to get to work.
After the Madrid regional government led by Esperanza Aguirre of the right-wing Partido Popular (PP, People’s Party) demanded a 5 percent wage cut for Metro workers, workers gathered in an assembly on June 22 and voted for a three-day strike proposed by the unions, starting on June 28. Aguirre’s cut violates a collective contract negotiated last year. Workers demonstrated before the Madrid regional Assembly on June 24, chanting, “Out! Out!” and clashing with National Police.
After the first day of strikes—when minimum service rules forced workers to maintain 50 percent of normal service levels—a workers’ assembly including 4,000 of the 7,500-strong workforce voted for a total strike for yesterday. Workers voted yesterday to extend the total strike to today and to meet this morning to decide on whether to extend the strike.
Workers mounted effective pickets around stations and train depots. Pickets foiled an attempt by Metro management and the authorities to re-open line 8, which connects the airport to government ministries and the downtown area, with strikebreakers escorted by police.
Metro management decided yesterday to close all of its train stations, noting the “non-fulfillment of minimum service on the entire network.” It is reportedly asking private bus companies to coordinate their fleets as a strikebreaking service, should Metro workers vote tomorrow to extend the strike.
Teodoro Piñuelas, general secretary for Madrid-Metro of the Unión General del Trabajo (General Union of Labor, UGT), called yesterday’s strike a “success.” He told El País that pickets are “more informative than ever” and that strikers “do not require any arguments to support the stoppages.”
Representatives of the UGT, the CC.OO (Comisiones Obreras, Workers Commissions trade union) and the Conductors’ Union met with Metro and regional officials yesterday. After the meeting, trade union officials said they had received no concrete proposals on wages.
Madrid officials made hysterical denunciations of strikers, threatening to examine the files of workers who did not report for minimum service duty. Madrid Transport Councillor José Ignacio Echeverría said the “strike is already not a strike,” but “non-fulfillment of minimum service rules, which is a crime.” He added that the strike is “political” and that there would be “no negotiations while minimum service rules are not respected.”
Officials of the national government, led by Prime Minister José Rodriguez Zapatero of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE, Spanish Socialist Workers Party), also opposed the strike. Labour Minister Celestino Corbacho insisted that “the right to strike must be put in relation with the mobility rights of other citizens.” Similarly, Economy Minister Elena Salgado demanded adherence to minimum service rules, while claiming to respect the right to strike.
This position is both deceitful and absurd: minimum service rules inherently violate the right to strike, since the requirement that a minimum number of workers be on the job prevents all the workers from simultaneously exercising their right to strike. Salgado also implicitly threatened strikers with legal action, saying that courts should decide if workers had launched the strike in an “abusive” fashion.
Salgado added that, throughout the economic crisis, the unions had shown “an absolutely responsible attitude.” She said that she was convinced that this conduct “would maintain itself in the future.”
With this evasive comment, Salgado indicated that the trade unions, the PSOE, and its allies in the petty-bourgeois left all are relying on each other to prevent the strike from getting out of control and mounting a political challenge to austerity policies that are hated throughout Europe. Indeed, the current strike broke out and stopped the subway system only because workers organised mass meetings and demonstrations, which the unions could not control without calling strikes.
This testifies to the rising sentiment among workers for opposition to austerity policies—a position that places them in opposition to unions hostile to political struggle against the PSOE government. Indeed, the UGT is traditionally affiliated to the PSOE, while CC.OO is politically close to Izquierda Unida (United Left), an umbrella group including the Communist Party that is close to the PSOE.
The Madrid strike underscores that the formation of independent workplace organisations, based on political opposition to the government, is now critical to the expression of real working class opposition to austerity policies.
To the extent that these struggles do not base themselves on a socialist perspective to take power, however, and remain tied to the political establishment and the unions, they are bound to suffer defeat. The unions have worked with Zapatero ever since the outbreak of the European debt crisis to impose the same austerity measures that politicians and the banks have demanded in Greece, Portugal and throughout Europe.
In January, Zapatero met secretly with UGT leader Cándido Méndez and CC.OO chief Ignacio Toxo to prepare his government’s austerity plan. This involved cuts of at least €50 billion in state spending, as Zapatero aimed to reduce the budget deficit from 11.4 percent to 3 percent of GDP in the next three years. Zapatero also planned a two-year increase in the retirement age, to 67. With these measures, the PSOE and the banks sought to loot a working class already devastated by decades of right-wing policies and the fallout of a recently burst housing bubble. Unemployment stands at a staggering 22 percent, and youth unemployment is estimated at roughly 40 percent.
Nonetheless, the unions did not call a strike until late February, when they organised a toothless one-day strike, on a perspective of asking the government to soften its policy. At the time, Méndez said, “Social peace is everyone’s asset and responsibility....We are not going to break it and we don’t want to do so in the future.”
The strike did nothing to halt social cuts in Spain. However, they did allow the banks to gauge the political situation. Reuters noted: “The size of the protests, the first by the unions against Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, was being monitored by international investors for signs the government might struggle to contain social anger against the rise in the pension age to 67 from 65 and a 50 billion euro austerity plan.”
As working class anger against cuts has grown, international banks have progressively cut off lending to Spain. While there has been increasing discussion in Spain of a general strike, the trade unions are pressing to delay action for nearly three months, until a mass demonstration on September 9, and then a European day of action on September 29. These proposed actions, however, are not fundamentally different from the February strike.
The trade unions deeply fear and oppose a political confrontation between the working class and the government. In a joint news conference on June 15, CC.OO chief Ignacio Toxo and Méndez declared that the September 29 action “is not to change the government” but to make it alter direction. Earlier, Toxo had warned: “A general strike would be the worst thing to happen to Spain.”
Similarly, Vicente Rodríguez, the Conductors Union secretary leading the ongoing Metro strike committee in Madrid, told El País yesterday: “The Metro workers never have wanted to mix politics with the trade-union movement. We want to get results in June and not leave anything for September.” However, a perspective of settling for what management will temporarily give under pressure, and avoiding all appeals for political support in the rest of the working class, is a recipe for further defeats in Spain and internationally.
With governments and corporations everywhere expecting continued economic decline, the most the unions will negotiate are temporary postponements and reductions in cuts. After workers protested a May 26 announcement that Madrid authorities would slash garbage workers’ conditions—including cutting 200 jobs, an unspecified wage cut and modifying the rest schedule—the UGT and CC.OO called for an indefinite strike starting on June 21. The unions then negotiated a last-minute sellout to avert the strike, which included a wage freeze and postponing the job losses for two years.
Source: WSWS
Greek workers in fifth 24-hour strike against austerity measures
by Robert Stevens
30 June 2010
Tens of thousands of workers protested in several cities and towns in Greece on Tuesday during the latest 24-hour strike. The stoppage, the fifth since December, was in response to the austerity measures being imposed by the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) government of Prime Minister George Papandreou.
PASOK is imposing drastic attacks on the working population in exchange for a €110 billion three-year loan from the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank. Under its terms, the government is planning to cut its budget deficit from 13.6 percent of gross domestic product to under 3 percent of GDP by 2014. The austerity measures will see hundreds of thousands of jobs lost, pay cuts of 20 percent or more imposed, and social services and pensions gutted.
On Friday, the PASOK cabinet approved legislation aimed at slashing pension rights, social benefits and pay, while vastly reducing workers’ employment protection. The attacks on pensions include increasing the number of contribution years from 37 to 40 and raising the retirement age for women from 60 to 65. The bill also freezes pensions in 2011-2013 and merges the many existing funds into just three. The legislation implements as well financial penalties to prevent workers taking early retirement in jobs that are arduous.
The legislation will now be voted on in parliament with a debate scheduled to last more than a week, beginning on Tuesday. Amid speculation that some PASOK deputies are considering opposing the measures, Papandreou has threatened to call early elections if the measures are not supported by all deputies.
The Greek government also warned Monday that it is to impose a three-year pay freeze for the lowest-paid workers in the private sector. The employers’ federation and the GSEE workers’ confederation are currently involved in talks on a collective pay agreement for workers in the private sector. PASOK spokesman George Petalotis said the pay freeze would be imposed without a settlement being reached. “This decision has been made”, he said. “The way it’s going to be carried out is an editorial matter.”
The government is well aware that it can count on the trade union bureaucracy to sanction such draconian attacks. In a recent interview, Yiannis Panagopoulos, the president of GSEE, said, “If employers could guarantee me that there would be no retrenchments then I would go along—as hard as it would be—to accept a three-year wage freeze”.
Tuesday’s strike severely hit transport nationwide as workers employed by the state Hellenic Railways Organisation struck for 24 hours, whilst Piraeus-Kifissia urban electric railway, bus and trolley buses staff held partial stoppages.
Strikes by workers at the Athens airport led to the cancellation of around 100 domestic flights. The air traffic controllers’ union did not support the strike, and as a result, international flights were not affected by the action and operated as scheduled.
Most public services and schools closed, and hospitals operated with a skeleton staff. Journalists began a 24-hour stoppage, and as a result, no newspapers are to be published Wednesday. News bulletins were also taken off the air.
On Monday, Public Power Corporation workers hung banners at the front of the company’s headquarters in central Athens and staged a protest.
Up to 20,000 people demonstrated in Athens, chanting anti-government slogans before marching to the parliament building in Syntagma Square. Riot police were again mobilised, attacking demonstrators with tear gas and stun grenades in the square. According to an Associated Press report, the police claimed that 13 demonstrators were detained and 6 arrested. In one case, AP reported, “an AP photographer saw police detain one young man in a subway car, spraying him with pepper spray.”
As with previous strikes, PAME, the trade union federation affiliated to the Stalinist Communist Party of Greece, held a separate march and rally from that of the GSEE/ADEDY in Athens.
Two seamen’s unions belonging to PAME took strike action and staged blockades at the main port of Piraeus during the day in an attempt to prevent people from boarding ferries to the Aegean islands. The action had been declared illegal the day before after the president of the Association of Greek Coastal Shipping Companies met with a Supreme Court prosecutor.
Last week, the two unions also blockaded the port, which proceeded despite being ruled illegal. During that action, thousands of passengers were stranded at Piraeus. The unions are part of the 14-strong Panhellenic Seamen’s Federation. The other 12 unions did not support either strike.
The blockade affected several hundred passengers who were unable to board ferries. The Civil Protection Ministry said that all ships scheduled to sail in the morning did leave the port.
The latest strike follows the visit to Athens by Poul Thomsen, the head of the IMF’s Greek monitoring team. In an interview with the Vima newspaper, he stressed his support for the government’s “ambitious” austerity measures.
Thomsen said, “Such an adjustment is not easy and often causes discontent,” adding, “The effort has begun vigorously and I firmly believe that Greece will succeed.”
Opposition to the austerity programme is growing within Greece. According to an opinion poll for the Proto Thema daily, 64.8 percent of those questioned said the pension restructuring would make the country’s pension funds unviable. Only 21.6 percent of respondents believed the pension changes would be beneficial.
The latest strike is once again a confirmation of the reactionary role of the Greek trade unions, which seek to ensure that the PASOK regime is able to remain in the saddle. Since December, the unions have called these selective, token strikes and made a few statements feigning their opposition to this or that measure. The strikes are called not as a means to mobilise the working class, but in order to allow workers’ growing anger to be dissipated.
Speaking on Tuesday, GSEE head Panagopoulos claimed, “It was a very large gathering and march and strike participation is higher than at other times.” He added, “Naturally we will strike next Wednesday or Thursday again when the bills will be voted on in parliament” (emphasis added).
This sums up the role of the union bureaucracy in propping up PASOK. Union leaders know very well that these sporadic, limited strikes have enabled the government to implement all its austerity measures over the past six months.
In ruling circles, those who follow Greek events are very conversant with the demobilising role of the trade union bureaucracy.
In a recent blog comment posted on The Source, a European news site of the Wall Street Journal, Nick Skrekas described Panagopoulos as “not a hot head who fires off needless threats of industrial action”. He added that “he is a realist and deep down probably acknowledges that the bulk of the changes will be implemented despite his protests, rallies and strikes.”
Skrekas warned that the government’s measures may result in protests involving a “one-million-strong horde of unemployed people taking to the streets by the end of this year”.
He continued, “The union chief hints that his protests and strikes are a safety valve allowing some of the societal steam to be released before this potential explosion occurs. It doesn’t appear that he’s convinced that his industrial action will make any difference other than at the margin of policy.”
Source: WSWS