trade unions
The European workers' movement: dangers and challenges
In Portugal, November 2010 general strike called by the Communist Party-led CGTP and the
United States: New workers' movement at the crossroads
By Dan La Botz
United States: The new American workers' movement and the confrontation to come
Protesters fill the Rotunda at the state capitol building on February 16, 2010, in Madison, Wisconsin.
By Dan La Botz
February 28, 2011 -- Solidarity Webzine -- The new US workers' movement—born in the last few weeks in the giant protests in Wisconsin and Ohio—faces a fateful confrontation. In Madison and Columbus, Republican legislators are pushing to abolish public employee labour unions and tens of thousands of workers are protesting and resisting. We have seen nothing like this face-off between workers and bosses in the United States since the labour upheaval of the early 1970s, though the issues in the balance are more like those of the 1930s. The very existence of the US labour movement is at stake. The question is: What will it take to win?
Egypt: Much more than a `Facebook revolution'
February 18, 2011 – There has been much written in the main
The US Navy counts on the Suez canal for rapid deployment of vessels from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.
[For background to Egypt's working-class movement see also "Egypt: Historian Joel Beinin on the role of the labour movement" and "Egypt: Workers hold key to uprising".]
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Kamal Abbas, director of the Center for Trade Union and Workers Services, interviewed by Jane Slaughter
February 9, 2011 -- Labor Notes -- Though all eyes are on Cairo and its Liberation Square, few could know that Egyptian workers have been protesting and striking in huge numbers for years.
Cuba: El sindicato Australian Workers Union se arrodilla ante Washington
[English at http://links.org.au/node/2122.]
Por Tim Anderson
En este mes de enero, el Sindicato de Trabajadores Australianos (AWU—Australian Workers Union) escribió una carta insultante al nuevo embajador cubano en Australia, Pedro Monzón. El documento del sindicato revela la dominación ideológica que Estados Unidos mantiene sobre las partes más débiles y dóciles del movimiento sindical australiano.
El embajador Monzón, llegado a Australia a finales de 2010, invitó a varios dirigentes sindicales para un intercambio. Paul Howes, como Secretario Nacional del AWU, le replicó de manera innecesariamente ofensiva: ‘Estaría encantado de aceptar su oferta de encuentro, pero, desafortunadamente, sólo podrá llevarse a cabo cuando el gobierno cubano cese la represión de los sindicatos independientes y libere los numerosos dirigentes sindicales actualmente encarcelados en su país.’ En la carta se menciona a cinco encarcelados.
[For background to Egypt's working-class movement see also "Egypt: Historian Joel Beinin on the role of the labour movement" and "Egypt: Workers hold key to uprising".]
Egypt: Historian Joel Beinin on the role of the labour movement; Democracy Now! interview
February 10, 2011 -- Democracy Now! -- Egypt’s pro-democracy uprising is surging after striking workers joined
in the protests nationwide. Thousands of Egyptian workers walked off the
job February 9 demanding better wages and benefits. Strikes were
reported in Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor and the Suez Canal. We speak to
Stanford University Professor Joel Beinin, who, as the former director
of Middle East Studies at the American University in Cairo, has closely
studied the Egyptian labour movement for years. “This is huge, because
there has been for the last 10 years an enormous wave of labour protests
in Egypt”, Beinin says. “In the last few days what you’ve seen is tens
of thousands of workers linking their economic demands to the political
demand that the Mubarak regime step aside.” Click HERE for the program transcript. Intervew continues HERE.
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Egypt: Workers hold key to uprising
Pro-democracy protesters confront police in Suez.
By Jeff Kaye
January 31, 2011 -- MyFDL -- While much analysis has focused on the youth-social network driven aspects of the recent uprising in Egypt, or on diplomatic and political maneuvers that thus far have left President Mubarak in office, and given even more power to the state repressive apparatus through the appointment of intelligence chief Omar Suleiman to the vice-presidency, it is the Egyptian working class that holds the future of its country in its hands.
The organised workers' movement saw its unions gutted by state privatisation and the gutting of union independence though the hated Law No. 100, which guaranteed that union representation would be strongly controlled by the state. However, recent events, particularly in strategic Suez, have shown that when the social weight of the workers is thrown into the balance, even all the machinations of Hillary Clinton’s State Department will not be able to patch together Mubarak’s state apparatus. The question then will be, what will follow it?
Cuba: Australian Workers Union tips its hat to Washington
More than a million Cuban workers mobilise each year on May Day, organised by the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba trade union federation.
[See also "Cuban trade unionist: `Workers are key participants in the Cuban revolution'".]
By Tim Anderson
January 26, 2011 -- This January the Australian Workers Union (AWU) wrote an insulting letter to the new Cuban ambassador to Australia, Pedro Monzón. The union’s response shows the tight ideological hold that the US has over the weaker, more compliant sections of the trade union movement in Australia.
