Showing posts with label striking miners. Show all posts
Showing posts with label striking miners. Show all posts

Sunday 4 October 2020

Covid Gains.


      I keep repeating myself, this pandemic has been seized upon by the state and the corporate world. The state has seen this a an opportunity to increase population control, introducing a raft of measures, usually without any parliamentary scrutiny, which will be modified rather than eliminated, attempting to get people into a more receptive mode and more acceptable to total surveillance, scrutiny and a submissive attitude. While the corporate world grasp this as an opportunity to slash at workers wages and working conditions, while at the same time having billions of taxpayers money poured into their already well filled coffers. To the state and the big boys in the corporate world, covid19 has been a win-win situation. Only the concerted effort of the people can turn this round to an opportunity for the people to change that old normal, into a new normal that puts the people at the heart of fair and just society that sees to the needs of all our people and doesn't kneel before the altar off the economy and profit.

 Columbian mine.

This from LabourStart:
        Once again, a company has taken advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic to attack workers' rights. This time, it's coal miners in Colombia who have had to go on strike. Workers at the Cerrejón coal mine are in the middle of bitter dispute with three multinational mining companies, Anglo American, BHP and Glencore.
When the pandemic broke out back in February the union, in good faith, withdrew its list of demands and suspended collective bargaining negotiations.
        When negotiations resumed in July, the company refused to respond to the union proposals, and instead demanded concessions in rights and benefits. Then the company unilaterally announced a radical shift change roster, without consulting the union and in violation of Colombian law. The new shift roster, which workers call the 'death shift' will lead to the loss of 2,500 direct and indirect jobs, will require workers to work an additional 72 days a year for the same wage, will cause turmoil in workers' family lives and will lead to an increase in fatigue and thus an increase in accidents. The company has boycotted the government labour ministry’s facilitation to end the strike, now in its fourth week.
        The union in Colombia and IndustriALL global union have a launched an online campaign on LabourStart in support of the miners. Please take a moment to show your support - click here.
       And please don't forget our campaign in support of miners in Ukraine, who have taken their fight for justice underground - into the mines. Learn more and show your support here. 

Ukraine striking miners.
 
       Please share this message with your friends, family and fellow union members. 
 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

Saturday 16 June 2012

SPANISH MINERS RESISTANCE TO AUSTERITY.



           Our media is never eager to spout the facts but more inclined to paint a nice picture or report on turmoil in countries far- far away, but everything here is just fine. Our lords and masters are trying hard to solve the “Euro crisis” and once that is sort then everything will be just hunky-dory. Of course right here on our doorstep there is resistance to the financial Mafia's “austerity” measures. Country after country is seeing the people take action to defend themselves against the onslaught of slash and burn tactics of the financial mafia. One event that has received little or no coverage by the media is the strike by 8,000 miners in Asturias in Spain. An area with a long militant anti-right-wing history.


 This fromWikipedia.
         “The Asturian miners' strike of 1934 was a major strike action, against the entry of the CEDA into the Spanish government on October 6,[1] which took place in Asturias in northern Spain, that developed into a revolutionary uprising. It was crushed by the Spanish Republican Navy and the Spanish Republican Army, the latter using mainly Moorish troopers from Spanish Morocco.[2]
Franco controlled the movement of the troops, aircraft, warships and armoured trains used in the crushing of the revolution. Visiting Oviedo after the rebellion had been put down he said; " this war is a frontier war and its fronts are socialism, communism and whatever attacks civilization in order to replace it with barbarism." [3] Though the colonial units sent to the north by Franco consisted of the Spanish Foreign Legion and the Moroccan mercenaries of the Regulares Indigenas, the right wing press portrayed the Asturian rebels in xenophobic and anti-Semitic terms as the lackeys of a foreign Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy.---”

 
         This present strike has been going on for more than 3 weeks, there has been running battles with the police, the miners have blocked main roads and devised guerrilla tactics in their fight against the heavy state repression being used to try and break their strike. 
         "Striking coal miners have clashed with police in northern Spain, in some of the worst disturbances since the government imposed austerity measures. The interior ministry said at least seven people had been injured in the clashes outside a mine in Asturias. Miners fired sky rockets and ball-bearings at riot police who responded with rubber bullets and tear gas.
        The miners are protesting at plans to cut government subsidies from 300m euros (£242m; $376m) to 110m euros. Thousands of miners have been on strike across northern Spain for weeks. The interior ministry said police had been trying to remove roadblocks of burning tyres at El Entrego, near Oviedo, when they were met with a barrage of missiles fired by the miners. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets and after several hours of clashes the miners took to the surrounding mountains and forests for cover, reports said.---"

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