The unions Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT),
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), Solidaridad Obrera
(SO) and Coordinadora Sindical de Clase (CSC) met on June
24 in Madrid to discuss how we can respond to the attack we the
workers are under, an attack without precedents, one that bushwhacks
our acquired rights, one made a reality by the government and
European institutions, the bosses and the markets. How we can
coordinate a struggle, and a response, based on class unity and
action.
All of the unions expressed their complete rejection of the
policies that through successive labor reforms, pension system cuts,
collective bargaining reforms and cuts in the public services aim to
send the hefty IOU to the workers, and the weakest sectors of the
society, who then foot the bill for capital’s crisis.
We also agreed that a shared response, one that was above our
differences, was needed to mobilize the workers in a unified
struggle, with the participation of all those union organizations,
workers groups and social movements who are firmly against the policy
of social pacts and demobilization promoted by the institutional
unionism of CCOO and UGT.
We believe we need to work breaking with a union model that in the
last 30 years has only brought us continued loss of rights and that
this time of a severe crisis of capitalism has demonstrated its
complicity and lack of willpower and ability to react to the attacks
on the working class. A union model that has promoted an
institutionalized unionism that depends on the state whose aim seems
to be to prevent the working class’ real mobilization and
participation in autonomous union organizations that actually want to
fight.
The reform of collective bargaining, being debated in congress
right now, is a new affront to our rights, one more turn of the screw
to make it harder and harder to fight in the workshops and in the
community, consolidating institutional bi-unionism and its role as
managers of the crisis defending the capitalists’ interests, making
union organizations’ ability to act even hard, and cutting the
workers’ freedom to organize.
The meeting on June 24 was just the first step in a process that
will grow in the coming months to promote mobilization based on
common demands, debated and assumed by the workers, with our eyes set
on a General Strike that can take on the current offensive and
advance towards the conquest of new social rights.
The events sparked by May 15 have burst onto the scene, breaking
the climate of passivity that prevailed before, and have pushed us
into a scenario of mobilization that needs to move onto the shop
floor, pushing workers’ economic and social demands into the
limelight, giving this movement the tools it needs to confront and
fight in the labor and economic terrain, complementing
socio-political demands with specific actions against capitalism.
The situation demands an emphatic response from us that underlines
the fact that the measures we are suffering as workers mean we must,
we must, continue with our union struggles and to definitively break
with the model of institutionalized unionism. That it serve as a
precedent where the class unions are the ones who mark off the tempo
with offensive actions to obtain our goals.
Confederación
General del Trabajo (CGT)
Confederación
Nacional del Trabajo (CNT)
Solidaridad
Obrera (SO)
