Solidarity With The Exploited, Not The Exploiters

      An interesting article from "Bordered by Silence", raising the question, is there a strike you wouldn't support? In my opinion, it is a matter of solidarity with the exploited, not the exploiters. so it is a definite yes.

  -------In April, some workers were quite reasonably sick of the management’s bullshit and decided to turn their anger into action. Some members of management found themselves forced to work a bit of overtime, and one of them got a serious talking to. The police intervened to save the poor suits. A few hours later, a night team, though quickly assembled, decided to take action. Not to produce merchandise and further enrich the boss, but rather by finally doing a something useful in the factory: a large part of the work space (notably the offices) were ably destroyed using a forklift, which also caught fire shortly after. As well, several cars belonging to the bosses suffered broken headlights. Destroy what destroy us, that’s what it’s about; and that’s precisely our point.

      The next day, a union rep appeared on scene to show off his nervous face for the cameras and to condemn these joyful acts of human dignity. Well of course, a union rep is, in a way, there to protect the factory: even when he seems nice, he’s still a cop. When the decisive moment arrives, it’s clear to see which side he’s on. The unions were much more excited about the prison guards strike in Brussels and Wallonia that lasted several weeks [2]. Unlike the prisoners-----

And:

   ------Imagine for a moment… Locked up inside the bare walls of a prison, deprived of freedom and at the mercy of fickle and unscrupulous people who make their living locking others in concrete cages. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, they go on strike as well. Not because they’re sick of slamming the cell doors day after day, but because they want a better salary and more colleagues to help them in their grim task.
       The unions and leftists supported the strike, but there is a fundamental difference between these two methods of putting pressure on the boss: there are the strikers who block or destroy the machines, and thus the production of merchandise, and those who put the lives of prisoners at risk. Because when the screws go on strike, the prisoners don’t get showers, visits, or yard time [3]. Everyone spends the whole day locked in their cell, with the intolerable consequences that follow. In many places, the prisoners didn’t just suffer through the strike without doing anything and some unrest broke out. In the Tournai, Arlon, Huy, Landtin, and Andenne prisons, the prisoners responded by burning their cells, flooding the units, trashing the hallways, etc. Saturday May 7, a devastating mutiny rocked the Merkplas prison in Anvers. Whole wings were destroyed and burnt by the insurgent prisoners. Walls were leveled, fences torn down, whole units ransacked. Between striking guards and prisoners in revolt, it’s clear which side we’re on.-------

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

   

Occupy The World.

       In the past workers formed unions to protect their conditions and to try to improve them. No doubt there have been bitter struggles where the union was at the forefront of those struggles. However, now-a-days, unions are big business, multi-nationals, and though they shout for change, they don't want things to change too much. They are doing very well thank you, with their fat salaries and expense sheets, making it all the more likely that they will compromise, and sell the workers short. Because of this most workers now feel they have to fight on several fronts, and take on the might of that corrupt alliance of power and wealth, the state, the corporate world, and the big unions. New methods of organising are necessary, and are developing, at ground level, in the work place, and in the community.

Mistreated by Movistar and abandoned by their unions, telephone technicians take matters in their own hands — and occupy their employer’s headquarters.

Striking workers occupy Telefonica HQ, in Barcelona.

         Words of cynicism and distrust are repeatedly heard by activists of the country’s countless social movements, whether it is the excluded and isolated Movistar-Telefónica strikers, the powerful and popular PAH platform of indebted mortgage-holders and evictees, or just ordinary people who see the union movement as but one more player in capital-P politics — even to the extent that they form part of the hated casta, the ruling establishment.

      How nuanced, fair and widespread these sentiments are may be debatable and unknowable, but it is clear that the old high-level negotiations, the growing distance between workers and their union representatives, together with the bureaucratization and the awkward arrangements of public funding, have made people turn away from the traditional labor movement to develop alternative ways of pushing for social justice and equality.

Read the full article HERE:

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk