New Workers’ Left Emerges in Belgium

“Nous voulons la rupture avec le PS”

Daniel Piron, of the left-trade union federation, the FGTB*, was on the Belgium Radio station, La Première this morning (Here).

He charged the country’s Socialist Party of participating in “neo-liberal” governments.

La FGTB Charleroi organise samedi avec la CNE-Hainaut un meeting pour créer une “alternative de gauche à la crise capitaliste”. Des formations de la gauche radicale sont aussi invitées, mais il n’est pas question de créer un nouveau parti explique Daniel Piron, secrétaire régional de la FGTB Charleroi/Sud-Hainaut. “Il y a une volonté de travailler ensemble et d’élargir la réflexion aux autres instances syndicales de la FGTB et de la CSC“**.

The FGBT Charleroi is organising a meeting on Saturday with the CNE-Hinaut to “create a left-wing alternative to the capitalist crisis. Organisations of the radical left have been invited, though there is no question of forming a new party, explained Daniel Prion, the regional secretary of the FGBT Charlero/Sud-Hainaut. “There is a will to work together, to deeper our analysis, with other parts of the union structure inside the FGBT and the CSC”.

Daniel Piron added,

le PS et Ecolo “ne sont plus des partis qui relaient les revendications du monde du travail. Ces partis sont intégrés au système.

The Socialist Party and the Greens are “no longer parties which reflect the demands of working people. These parties are part-and-parcel of the system.

Background  information on La Lettre aux syndicalistes Blog  here.

The left groups invited include (see article here),  Le parti de Gauche (aligned with its French counterpart of  Jean-Luc Mélenchon) the  Front des Gauches (alliance of 6 small groups, including Communist Party, and the LCR) , LCR (Fourth International), LRT (Committee for a Workers International CWI) , PTB (Parti du travail de Belgique – Partij van de Arbeid van België – Marxist-Leninist)

* 1,5 Million members.  La Fédération générale du travail de Belgique (FGTB) (Algemeen Belgisch Vakverbond = ABVV. 

** 1,7 million members La Confédération des syndicats chrétiens, ou CS

Before Thatcher: the Movement for Workers’ Control.

The 1970s and the Movement for Workers’ Control.

“Trade unions have historically bargained for better terms for the sale of labour power; they have not been able to challenge the existence of the labour market itself. Today, however, the relation between ‘political’ and ‘economic’ struggle have changed.”

Perry Anderson. The Limits and Possibilities of in: The Incompatibles. Trade Union Militancy and the Consensus. 1967.

Perry Anderson was writing about incomes policies. Attempts to impose, or reach by union consent, agreements about pay levels would be made by successive governments, Conservative or Labour, right until Margaret Thatcher’s victory in 1979. That is, pay disputes became political because the Cabinet and the State were involved.

These, as is well-known, featured prominently during the decade. The unions’ efforts to defend and increase their members salaries, from the late ‘sixties ‘wage drift’ to the need to adjust to inflation, led to countless disputes. Some on the left thought that the resulting “profit squeeze” of the period was a sign of growing working class strength. Other held them responsible for the country’s (relative) decline.

There is a library of literature on this subject. But Anderson could equally have referred to the way in which the authority of British capitalism was challenged from the inside. That is through demands and efforts to make real workers’ power within companies. This movement had an influential and coherent voice. The Institute for Workers’ Control was formed in 1968, with the support of Hugh Scanlon of the Engineering union (AEU) and Jack Jones of the Transport and General Workers’ Union (T & G). It was influential (though never dominant) within the Labour Party and the wider left. The Institute’s conferences debated a broad range of proposals to introduce industrial democracy Above all, management’s right to manage was disputed.

In the wake of Thatcher’s death her supporters have shouted loudly about the role of the unions in the 1970s. They state that organised labour had undue influence over the Wilson and Callaghan Cabinets (1974 – 1979), that they pressured them to shore up unprofitable industries, that they stifled enterprise. It was common to talk about “corporatism”, the way in which efforts were made to draw unions, employers and the state together formally through bodies such as the National Enterprise Board (NEB).

The media has given ample publicity to those who claim that Thatcher freed them from union backed State regulation. That an open market enabled them to succeed. That they took responsibility for their own fate and succeeded. Everybody should be like me – look at my wad ! – is the boast.

Perhaps instead of pointing to the delusions of those who think so highly of their own talents, or to the victims of the same market process, we should consider the forward-looking ideas of the 1970s left. Indeed, with their grass-roots democratic hopes, it might be better to look at this not so distant past, before going further back to the 1945 Labour Government.

An Offensive Movement.

The Institute for Workers’ Control was not a defensive but an offensive movement. It asked the simple question: if democracy is such a good thing for politics, why is it not the rule at work? If individual responsibility is to forced down people’s throats (as is now happening again under ‘welfare reform’), what is wrong with people taking responsibility for the companies that employ them? Marx described the way in which in the market we are ‘free’, the “very Eden of the innate rights of man”? But at the same time, within production, factory, office or shop, there is a sign “No admittance except on business.” (Page 280. Capital Vol. 1. Penguin Edition). In this respect have we not gone beyond the 19^th century?

Workers’ Control. Another World is Possible. Ken Coates. (2003) offers valuable material from the Institute for Workers’ Control (which dissolved in the 1980s). Ken Coates article, Democracy and Workers’ Control (published in Towards Socialism. Eds. Perry Anderson, Robin Blackburn. 1965) describes the “antithetical natures of private property and democracy”. He criticised ‘paternalistic Fabianism”, that is the nationalised industries run by civil servants.

The People’s Assembly Against Austerity and its Critics.

Sheldon: Better leader than John Rees.

The People’s Assembly Against Austerity is a welcome initiative.

It comes at a time when there is a need to concentrate minds and activism on the fight against the Liberal-Tory Coalition.

It is a response from what Ernest Bevin would call the “bowels of the labour movement”.

And a lot more, Greens, anti-cuts campaigns, and plain ordinary people sick with austerity politics.

Its ideas reflect the young brilliant writer Owen Jones who has been taken to the heart of that labour movement.

People around the country are already inspired.

But, and there’s always a but, there are concerns.

Why has John Rees appeared as a leading figure cited in the Independent?

John Rees is, to put it mildly, ‘controversial’.

Some people, and I have spoken to them face-to-face, say he is a good person.

However, the politics of the group he leads, Counterfire, (a split from the SWP with very similar policies and ideas)  are not universally admired.

Comrades as diverse as Anna Chen * and Ian Bone reflect – strongly- this feeling.

On any measure Rees is not a suitable figurehead for a unifying movement.

We are at a crucial political point.

Our movement has to respond to the hate and fear of the Liberal-Tory Coalition with unity.

There is no place for discredited divisive  figures.

Personally I would prefer  Sheldon Cooper of Big Bang Theory and Buffy the Vampire Slayer to head our movement.

* I have to cite comrade Anna in detail.

For who do we see at the helm? John Rees and his Counterfire crew — the usual suspects with the reverse Midas touch, turning everything to shit; arch-bureaucrats bringing order and stasis to the struggle like Blue Meanies invading Pepperland. If you want to see what’s in store for this much-needed initiative, it would pay to examine what’s happened every time the former Socialist Workers Party (SWP) leaders — the John Rees/Lindsey German axis — have bolted themselves to the head of a campaign: how Rees took an axe to the Socialist Alliance (SA); how they sunk Respect; and how they sat on the anti-war movement in the Stop the War Coalition (STWC). They can’t see a flicker of life without holding a pillow over its head and declaring themselves king and queen of the castle.

like some Mafia don testing out a henchman intent on making his bones, Rees instructed me to carry out a character assassination on them in the SA email lists and media for being late.

Titan Boss, French ‘Workers’ Talk for 3 Hours, Work for 3 and Eat for (!) I.

PARIS, Feb 20 (Reuters) – The CEO of a U.S. tyre maker has delivered a crushing summary of how some outsiders view France’s work ethic in a letter saying he would have to be stupid to take over a factory whose staff only put in three hours work a day.

Titan International’s Maurice Taylor, nicknamed “The Grizz” for his negotiating style, told the left-wing French industry minister in a letter published by media on Wednesday that he had no interest in rescuing a plant set for closure.

“The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three,” Taylor wrote on Feb. 8 in the letter in English to the minister, Arnaud Montebourg.

“I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that’s the French way!” Taylor added in the letter, which was posted by business daily Les Echos on its website and which the ministry confirmed was genuine.

“Titan is going to buy a Chinese tire company or an Indian one, pay less than one Euro per hour wage and ship all the tires France needs,” he said. “You can keep the so-called workers.”

I think it would be fair to say that these comments have not gone down well in France.

l’Humanité leads with,

“Le PDG de Titan insulte les ouvriers de Goodyear dans un courrier à Montebourg”.

Imagine, having breaks from chatting and lazing around for an hour a day!

 

 

General Strike in Tunisia Against Islamist-led Government Next Week.

Tunisian UGTT: Defends the Workers Against Islamists.

Protests against Islamist rule are not confined to Egypt.

From the  Mashriq to the Maghreb people are opposing the ‘parties of god’.

Next Thursday in Tunisia the union federation, the UGTT, has called a General Strike.

The background as described by Gulf News,

On Tuesday, several hundred Islamists armed with knives and sticks charged a gathering of members of the UGTT union in the capital and broke office windows with stones. Police had to intervene to separate the two groups.

“The UGTT decided to go on strike on December 13, after the attack on the central trade unions and trade unionists on Tuesday,” the union said in a statement on Wednesday.

AFP reports,

“The UGTT (General Union of Tunisian Workers) has decided that a general strike will take place on Thursday, December 13, across Tunisia,” it told AFP.

It called the strike to protest an attack on Tuesday against a UGTT demonstration blamed by the union on supporters of the Islamist ruling party.

A union leader told AFP the UGTT demands the dissolution of the League for the Protection of the Revolution. It accuses the group, close to the ruling Ennahda party and with a reputation for brutal violence — of Tuesday’s attack.

The nationwide strike call is only the third to be made by the powerful UGTT since its foundation in the 1940s.

The first was in 1978 and the second work on January 12, 2011 — two days before the fall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s regime.

On Tuesday, several dozen assailants attacked members of the UGTT, who were gathered outside the union’s headquarters in Tunis to mark the 60th anniversary of the assassination of its founder, Farhat Hached.

Police intervened to separate the two sides, but 10 demonstrators were wounded in the attack, according to the trade union.

Tunisia Live  reports that opposition members of the National Constituent Assembly (المجلس الوطني التأسيسي التونسي, Assemblée constituante tunisienne) have called for a 3 day boycott of its plenary  proceedings in solidarity with the UGTT.

It will be interesting to see how the junior member of the Ennahda government, the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties (Arabic: التكتل الديمقراطي من أجل العمل والحريات‎, at-Takattul ad-Dīmuqrāṭī min ajl il-‘Amal wal-Ḥurriyyāt ;  Ettakatol – Forum démocratique pour le travail et les libertés) which has observer status to the Second International, will react to this latest act by Islamist thugs.

President Moncef Marzouki has recently called for a smaller Cabinet of technocrats to deal with the crisis.

Progressive Islamists?

Ennahada has enjoyed very favourable coverage in the UK .

Seumas Milne  wrote in the Guardian (26.10.11),

“The once savagely repressed progressive Islamist party An-Nahda won the Tunisian elections this week on a platform of pluralist democracy, social justice and national independence. Tunisia has faced nothing like the backlash the uprisings in other Arab countries have received, but that spirit is the driving force of the movement for change across a region long manipulated and dominated by foreign powers.”

@georgegalloway George Galloway tweeted before this election,

“Tunisians: Choose An-Nadha in elections. Sheikh Rachid is a wise kind brave man. A lion should lead the lions who began the Arab Revolution!”

Now we know the wisdom and bravery of this  ’lion’.

Video of the attack on the UGTT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZV0PAXzG-A