bristol reading group 24th october: spaces outside capitalism

The next session of The Commune’s Bristol reading group on alternatives to capitalism will be looking at spaces outside capitalism. We will be discussing the value – or otherwise – of ‘autonomous zones’ and ‘co-operatives’ as a means of working outside the system.

From 6pm on Sunday 24th October at Café Kino, Ninetree Hill, Stokes Croft. Recommended reading below – email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com for more info.

berns salonger demo 22nd october; cleaners’ defence committee meetings

Call-out from the Cleaners’ Defence Committee

On Thursday 21^st October the Cleaners Defence Committee will hold a mass meeting covering cleaners struggles in UK and Berns, at UCL. After the demonstration on Friday 22^nd October there will be a social in aid of the Berns workers at LARC, and there will be 3 meetings that will include coverage of these struggles at the Anarchist Bookfair on Saturday 23^rd October.

a miserable case of british ‘justice’

Sarah Taylor reflects on the case of a French migrant worker in a battle with her employer and the courts

In late August I attended a court case of a female factory worker who was suing her employers for negligence. How I came to be there in the first place is not important, but what I observed and saw that day made me want to share the experience. I have attended a few court cases as an observer in the public gallery.

The case involved a French migrant worker who was suing her employers for negligence in a personal injury case.  She had been told to lift a container off a factory conveyor belt and in the process had badly injured her wrist. She testified that she was instructed to do so by an aggressive line manager whose bullying and aggressive behavior had made her working life miserable. After the injury had occurred she had decided to seek compensation since it had rendered her unable to work for some time.

the conspiracy of equals and the birth of communism

Jean Léger examines the history of Gracchus Babeuf and his ‘Conspiracy of Equals’, a communist organisation which emerged during the French Revolution. First appeared as ‘Babeuf et la naissance du communisme ouvrier’ in issue 2 of critical Marxist journal Socialisme ou Barbarie (May-June 1949).

Babeuf was the first example of a militant formulating a coherent socialist doctrine, struggling for a “plebeian” socialist revolution, in his view indispensible for the reorganisation of the economy and society as a whole. These attempts at the first communist party and doctrine are of great importance to us: they allow us to understand how revolutionary thought has developed. They moreover offer the opportunity for a concrete analysis of the link between the revolutionary militant and the working class in a given historical period [1].

CWO polemic on nationalism: the road to nowhere

by David Broder

Last Saturday I had a five-hour bus journey to Manchester. It was cold, the guy sitting next to me was eating something weird, and I’d forgotten my earphones so couldn’t listen to any music.

Further misfortune struck when I received an email on my phone, bearing an attachment of the Communist Workers’ Organisation article ‘The National Question Today and the Poisonous Legacy of the Counter-revolution’.

Part of this article was a reply against my own piece ‘The Earth is not flat’. Or, to be more precise, it was supposed to be a reply to my article, but in fact neatly sidestepped my points and instead held up their programme as a shining alternative to various straw-man arguments.

Megabus-stricken on the M1, I was stuck, unable to write a reply. Instead I brimmed with injustice (and, it must be said, no little amusement) at the CWO’s polemic. But this morning I took the time to make a few comments.

where does resistance come from?

Sheila Cohen reviews Workplace Conflict: Mobilization and Solidarity in Argentina by Maurizio Atzeni (Palgrave Macmillan 2010).

This is a book which should be read by anyone interested in and committed to rank and file activism. There are two obstacles – the price, which as with so many “academic” texts is absurdly high [1] and the English, which can be hard to get your head around. This is no fault of the Italian author, but the publisher clearly has not forked out for the necessary editing – which, at £60 a throw, is a bit of a cheek.

The content and theoretical approach of Workplace Conflict make it more than rewarding, despite these obstacles. In fact it is something of a landmark in the analysis of working-class consciousness, carrying as it does theoretical and strategic perspectives which depart from the static and non-dialectical approaches found in more conventional analyses. This is a book which can suggest ways forward for the rank and file working-class movement.

big flame: doing things a different way

Big Flame was a revolutionary socialist feminist organisation active in Britain between 1970 and 1984. Sophie Walker and Joe Thorne examine the group’s legacy.

Why revisit the experience of Big Flame?

Earlier this year, we read Beyond the Fragments: a 1979 collection of essays by three women active in feminist and socialist groups in the 1970s. It is three decades since the authors argued for the left to reappraise how we organise in light of insights from the women’s movement. Whilst necessarily a product of their experiences in that particular historical moment, there is much in their critical consideration of political organisation which matters today.

‘not one train left the depot’

Ahead of Spain’s 29^th September general strike, Millie Wild spoke to a Madrid Metro worker about the recent movement against 5% pay cuts.

The Madrid metro went on strike this summer in defiance of the anti-strike laws of “minimum services”, up against a massive media hysteria campaign and a virulent legal attack by the employers. The wage cut is not only an austerity measure but an attempt to weaken the entire collective bargaining process. The Metro strike was important for the strike methods, the open strike assembly, the militancy of new workers, and the solidarity shown by others, so we interviewed one of the metro train drivers, from the union Solidaridad Obrera.

Background to the strike

In the spring the government, as part of the austerity plan, moved to cut public sector workers´ wages by an average of five per cent. We had previously signed a “convenio”, an agreement, which was for four years. These convenios have never been broken before. The metro workers were not originally part of this austerity measure but the right wing regional president of Madrid included the metro and other semi-public workers such as the water company in the pay cut.

The workforce consists of 7700 workers, drivers, maintenance workers and station staff, half of whom are young workers who started in the last few years.

The first asemblea general

We began with assemblies in the different sections and then moved to the general assembly. The general assembly of the strike works as follows: the decisions are taken on a basis of open voting by a show of hands. You do not have to be a member of a union to take part and vote in the assembly. Workers from other workplaces can attend and speak but not vote. The strike commitee is made up of two delegates from each union (ie. not decided by proportional number of affiliates.)

In the first general assembly there were about 5000 people. There were delegates in solidarity from the Madrid bus drivers. Some workers had brought their partners and kids. We had to take away all the chairs as there was no room. The heat was unbearable, people were standing in the corridors. The proposal was made to have a one day strike with minimum services, (ie. fifty per cent of trains would run) and then if the regional parliament approved the plan to reduce wages then there would be two day strikes without minimum services. (tr. minimum services are an obligatory level of services which are imposed on strikers in certain important services and which mean that strikes don´t ´cause too much disruption´.) The assembly voted 100% in favour of the all-out strike (with two abstensions!) There had not been a 24 hour strike without minimum services in the metro since 1987.

On 28th June, the first day of the strike, with servicios minimos, the regional parliament approved the wage cut and so the next day the workers moved to an all out strike.

All out strike

People started picketing from 3am. Not one single train left the depot, the strike was a 100% success. Thousands of pamphlets were distributed at stations asking for solidarity with the strike. At one picket line, there were 15 bus company workers on the picket line in solidarity, and forty squatters from Madrid´s social centres movement. The strikers were amazed at this level of support from outside the Metro, and the mass pickets had a really big impact on morale.

The company opened disciplinary proceedings against one thousand two hundred workers for not carrying out the servicios minimos. The company then said that they were going to open the line from the airport to the centre of Madrid. A massive contingent of police went to the start of the line. The company pressured drivers on temporary contracts, telling them their contracts would not be renewed unless they drove these trains. The TV were announcing live on the news that the line was going to open. The strikers reinforced the picket lines and convinced the drivers not to open the line and not one driver took out a single train.

Second day of the all out strike

Again the strike was very successful but the media were attacking the strikers with all guns blazing, strikers were on the defensive, there was a mass denunciation of the strike. At the general assembly, two of the unions in the strike committee didn´t want to continue the strike. In the end the strike continued for the next two days but with servicios minimos.

Negotiations

At this point the company contacted the strike committee and said they wanted to start negotiations, but their condition for negotiations was for the strike action to stop forthwith. Four out of the five unions in the strike committee were in favour of calling off strike action. Solidaridad Obrera wasn´t, they said they wouldn´t change their position unless the general assembly asked them directly. And in the assembly they said that they weren´t in favour of calling off the strike. However in the assembly there wasn´t a general will to continue with the strike owing to the attacks by the media and a general fatigue, and the assembly voted to stop the strike and open negotiations.

The company were intransigent that there could be no agreement without a pay cut. Four of the five unions agreed to this. At this point Solidaridad Obrera said that they were not prepared to accept the agreement, and so two proposals were put to the general assembly.

Seventy per cent of the assembly accepted the proposal but a large minority of thirty per cent voted against it. Many people who voted to accept it said that they did so out of fear and weren´t happy about the settlement. The mainstream unions said that the 1200 disciplinary proceedings would not come to anything, it was just to placate public opinion, but if the strike action continued, well, they couldn´t guarantee anything. They then turned around and signed an agreement which, for the first time, accepted that the disciplinary proceedings could go ahead after the strike finished!

Attacks by the regional government and Metro management

In August the regional government started legal proceedings against all five unions, and the members of the strike committee personally, claiming compensation of six and a half million Euro for damages. Metro management is also continuing with the disciplinary proceedings against drivers.

The unions have opened counter-proceedings, and an agreement has been made to call an emergency general assembly the moment any worker is sanctioned in these disciplinary proceedings.

The real importance of this strike has been how it was carried out. The participation of young workers, with no experience of strike action, was excellent. This strike has broken out in the context of an austerity campaign in which the government wants to impoverish the working class in order to pay back the debts they have taken on from the banks. To do this they want to attack the whole collective bargaining process. These types of disciplinary actions are not usually followed through after the strike has finished, normally they are shelved. This and the claim for damages against the union shows that the workers are now being attacked for the stand they have taken and we need a strong and united campaign of action to defend them.

are the cuts necessary, and does it matter?

Oisín Mac Giollamóir responds to a debate on whether UK capitalism ‘needs’ to make the cuts

First, does it matter whether the cuts are necessary or not? Some might say “No. Everyone knows that Labour would have introduced them as well. The point is to show how they are necessary regardless of who is in power and to argue that the only real solution is revolution.”

I disagree: it is not the task of revolutionaries to merely point out the limitations of Labour and situate ourselves to the ‘left of Labour’. Rather, we should fight for anything that increases the power, confidence and autonomy of the working class. We should support wage-workers and their dependents making demands for themselves independently of the needs of capitalism.

fire brigade: will london burn?

The inside story of what is really happening in the London Fire Brigade, as told to The Commune.

16^th September 2010 and the London left descend on the London Fire Brigade Headquarters to join the mass lobby of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) monthly meeting called by Fire Brigades Union (FBU) and Unison LFEPA Branch.

the FBU are perceived as militant, but we need to break down the division between 'frontline' and 'support' staff

The headlines of the ’left’ press only tell part of the story: ‘FBU up the ante in contract dispute’ (Morning Star 17^th September), ‘London Firefighters ready to strike against dismissal threat’ (Newsline 18^th September), ‘Brutal bosses? Time to fight back!’ (The Socialist 23^rd-29^th September) and ‘The ballot is on to save fire jobs’ (Socialist Worker 25^th September).

unison stirred by goverment cuts onslaught

by Matt Mansfield

The national leadership of Unison held an anti-cuts Conference in a hotel in central Glasgow on 4^th September, which was billed as one of a number of similar events in different areas of the country. In many ways this event shows the fear of having large sections of its organisation smashed that haunts the Unison leadership: this fear is driving the union to seek out allies in the fight against the cuts.

The first thing of note was the publicity: it was circulated on left email lists and I thought it was a basic event held by Glasgow City Unison branch, which is effectively run by the Socialist Party in these parts. However, as far as I know it did not appear on the boards/network for Glasgow City Unison members, nor was there anything through my own Unison branch although this tends to be pretty insular in nature.

deadlock in venezuela vote

The 26^th September parliamentary elections saw a fresh clash between President Hugo Chávez’s PSUV and the right-wing opposition. Chávez has won a series of elections since 1998, with the American-backed opposition resorting to military means with their short-lived 2002 coup attempt.

However, today Chávez is presiding over a sharp fall in working-class living standards thanks to the economic crisis and diminishing oil revenue. Claudio Testa reports.

public meeting: social and class struggle in chile

Tuesday 5th October, 6pm, Room G37, Senate House, University of London, Malet St, London WC1E 7HU

Chile has benefited in the last period from high world demand for its minerals – especially copper. But fast growth has come at a cost, as the 33 miners currently trapped underground at the San Jose copper mine know.

french workers fight for their futures

On 7^th and 23^rd September there were mass demonstrations across France in protest at planned attacks on pensions. The government wants to increase the retirement age by two years. The cross-union days of action involved as many as 3 million people, and were accompanied with strike action in public transport, municipal services, schools, post and utilities. This article from Rebetiko explains the public anger at the government’s attacks.

“French people’s tolerance of the crisis is over”. Public opinion watchers could make their predictions a few days before the 7^th September strike without having to stick their necks out too much.

But this was not without risk of being exploited for a sort of subversive propaganda: the “French people” can be allowed a little moan from time to time, some gaps in that great French value of “tolerance”, but the important thing is that the alarm bells rung by the opinion surveys are quickly calmed with the necessary medicine. A dose of strike action, once every three months. If the symptoms persist, organise a national day of action without a strike call.