June 16th, 2012
Mining, transport, education… these are just the tip of the iceberg of a latent situation in all labour sectors of Asturias – and Spain. The metal industry, commerce, hotel and catering industry, public services, etc. have all been fragrantly abused by the bosses and the State, who want us as submissive and silent slaves.
However, it is not only the diverse work sectors that suffer such aggressions; the entire civil society is witnessing attacks against the gradually fewer rights that we possess, and which are mocked both through laws and by criminalizing resistance – as is the case with the miners – but up until this moment there has been no proportional response to such an infamy.
The path to follow is marked: Strike! But one which is general, extended with solidarity and made indefinite until victory, in order to make and unmake things according to our criterion – the criterion of majority – by disregarding and rejecting all those who only are attempting to take advantage of our struggles, sufferings, injustices and victories.
Since 2009, a series of barbarities have been succeeding one another in the form of labour reforms, pensions, retirement age, wage cuts, unjustified EREs [which end, shorten or suspend workers from their contracts], the close-down of profit-making enterprises, more than 300,000 million euros to the banking system… and, ultimately, a bailout which they tell us is not actually a bailout, and above all an intervention – nationalization of the puff [debt whose payment was evaded by fraudulent means] – in Bankia, as well as a corruption within the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), where no one is held responsible, nothing is being investigated and the culprits – of the crisis and our current situation – come out covered in roses.
They get away with it, they lie to us, they laugh in our faces; they spit on us and say it is raining!
Now, however, it looks like we can start to articulate a response on the basis of the conflicts that these weeks shake the land we live in. The miners showed us the way of struggle, the transport workers the way to victory (having totally and utterly won their claims, something which has been silenced in the media), the education workers the way of fighting back the injustice… while the political parties showed us how to act differently depending on the scope and their own particular interests (from the ‘People’s Party’ to the ‘United Left’, passing through the ‘Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party’, and with special mention of the extra-parliamentary radicals who neither act, nor do we expect them to do so).
It is for this reason that now all the workers and the whole of the civil society should all together in the same direction be supporting every labour sector and worker in the struggle for dignified conditions of living and a future which is not a misery. In particular, we should support the miners whose actions, strike and sabotages have been incriminated, as they have been accused of being vandals and terrorists (on several occasions by the very CCOO and UGT mainstream unions), without ever hearing the same terrorism accusations against those who are trying to destroy the coalfields – and with them the whole of Asturias – or those who are throwing thousands of families into the street by evictions.
We must stand in solidarity with the sectors in struggle, and go even further, creating links with all employment sectors that get belligerent against the policies and strategies of Capital.
But, above all, the path to follow is marked by the need to globalize the fight, making it general as is occurring in the mining regions, with all the work and social sectors going as one, not only for our own particular claims but for also for our comrades’ claims (making them our own) and, consequently, for general vindications that affect us all.
The path to follow is marked: Strike! But one which is general, extended with solidarity and made indefinite until victory, in order to make and unmake things according to our criterion – the criterion of majority – by disregarding and rejecting all those who only are attempting to take advantage of our struggles, sufferings, injustices and victories.
Towards the undefined general Strike! Towards solidarity between workers!