french workers en masse against pension ‘reforms’

by David Broder

Early September in France means la rentrée, not just back to school but also the end of the holidays and no more long evenings in the sun. But in 2010 it also means a return to pitched battles between the right wing government of Nicolas Sarkozy and the working class.

This Saturday l’Humanité, semi-official daily of the French Communist Party, reported on the ‘summer school’ of the MEDEF, a bosses’ federation akin to our ‘own’ CBI. The rhetoric was of Thatcher, and the need to disenfranchise the ‘no longer
useful’ trade unions.

two years supporting undocumented workers in france – an assessment

Ahead of our assembly this weekend assessing the impact of the crisis and proletarian self-activity, Yves Coleman, who will be joining us from France, presents an assessment of two years of activity in a Network (Réseau Education sans Frontières, i.e. RESF) supporting undocumented workers and their families

This report has a very personal tone, but as I don’t belong to any political group, I thought it would be easier to write it this way.

1) Initial motives

Professionally I work at home as a translator and proofreader. So my professional milieu is rather restricted and the area I live in is not really politically interesting. As I had only a mainly editorial activity (publishing a magazine and books 3 times a year under the name of Ni patrie ni frontières, see the website and its texts in English), I thought it would be useful to belong to a group engaged in a “mass activity” at grass root level. I chose the 18th district of Paris because it is a working class district with an important proportion of foreign workers of all nationalities, legal or illegal, who have been living there for a long time and have many traditions of resistance. I also chose this district because I had 2 friends already working there in a local RESF group (RESF means Education without frontiers network: it was created 5 years ago by radical teachers and left wing trade unionists : it’s now a nationwide network including around 200 organisations and trade unions, and, what is more important, thousands of non politically organised people).

the wire faces inwards: ‘the security is to keep us in!’

Sharon Borthwick reviews Rivethead, a ‘book of tales from the assembly line’

Revealing a talent for writing poetry at school does not relieve Ben Hamper of his birthright.  Duplicating his father and his father’s father he awaits, ‘to be pronounced fit for active drudgery’ by the medics. It wasn’t the plan. As a child at factory open days, he bore witness to his father’s crappy lot at the General Motors plant in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. But failed stints at other ventures led him through GM’s grounds, past the barbed wire. Later a fellow “prisoner” becomes absorbed by the fact that the wire faces inwards, ‘the security is to keep us in!’

Other means to incarceration are the good wages, ‘that pay stub was like a pair of concrete loafers.’ Not that the security lasts, the men are regularly laid off due to economic downturns, though Jimmy Carter tops up their dole packets to the extent they can make light and even party right in the face of unemployment. Not so in the Reagan years, of course. Back at the plant amidst the noise,’very close to intolerable’ and the heat,’one complete bastard’, the men are ground down by still more humiliations. ‘Quality’ becomes the company’s new byword and a man donning a cat costume becomes quality’s personification.

demo to support berns salonger cleaners

An IWW member reports on a recent demo in London in solidarity with migrant cleaners at Berns Salonger, a Swedish night club which has seen a long-running dispute over victimisations, low wages and 22-hour shifts.

On 13th August 2010 the Cleaners Defence Committee, London IWW Branch, and other supporters demonstrated outside the offices of London Regional [the club’s owner] in solidarity with the SAC [the workers’ union] for two hours, handing out information to the staff and passers-by.

The turnout was good and was supported by other groups including branches of The Rail and Maritime Transport Union (RMT) Solidarity Federation, Feminist Fightback, Latin American Workers Association, London Coalition Against Poverty amongst others.

support the tube strikes!

by Joe Thorne

See here for a full list of RMT picket times and locations – go down and visit from 22:00 Monday night or Tuesday morning!

Many of us will have been defending the tube strikes that begin on Monday evening, and continue – amongst different groups of workers – until the end of Tuesday to friends and fellow workers.  Many will be grumpy about their journey being disrupted; susceptible to TFL and government propaganda; and – perhaps without admitting it – somewhat jealous of the leverage, organisation, and (at least what they imagine to be) the superior terms and conditions of RMT members.  RMT General Secretary Bob Crow may be a figure of particular annoyance.

for communist workers’ inquiry

A working paper for our 11th September assembly examining communist potential within the crisis and challenges for revolutionaries.  All are welcome to the event – click here for more details.

The following notes are an individual contribution, they are not particularly sharp or structured, neither are they too funky in style. Nevertheless, they might help as a general ‘point of reference’ for the debate at the conference trying to phrase some thesis about how the ‘different class aspects’ (workplace, migration, university) are related both in terms of ‘class struggle’ and in terms of ‘crisis impact’. The social experience present at the conference will hopefully contribute to this open debate.

We start with looking at the ‘communist potential’ of this crisis and how the main problem for capital is to disguise the ‘abundant productive core’ of the crisis by segmenting the social cooperation of global labour. We then summarise some of the concrete crisis-induced changes in the different spheres of class. We end with a short polemic about the current stage of the left and challenges for working class revolutionaries.

The red jacobins : no substitute for workers’ freedom

Mark Hoskisson departs from the conventional Trotskyist interpretation of the Russian Revolution, in his analysis of Thermidor and the Russian Revolution. (Permanent Revolution issue 17). His conclusion is that the political counter-revolution took place inside the Bolshevik party in 1921 and was led by Lenin and supported by Trotsky.

Yet Mark still dismisses  the possibility of Bolshevik values, and methods of organisation, prior to 1921, contributing to the betrayal of the political aspirations of 1917. He still clings to the orthodox view that the Bolshevik Party could somehow be a custodian of workers’ power, despite substituting itself for the working class  following 1917, as long as the right to form factions were preserved. Hence, the banning of party factions in 1921 is seen as the historic turning point. Mark asserts that Bolshevism’s descent into counter-revolution marked a distinct break with, not a continuation of its fundamental character and politics in the period 1912 to 1920.

demonstration this friday in solidarity with ukrainian miners

Demonstrate outside Ferrexpo’s office in London on Friday 3rd September from 4:30pm at 2-4 King Street, SW1. Click here for flyer.

A major dispute is underway between mineworkers in Poltava in central Ukraine and Ferrexpo Plc, a major player on the global market mainly engaged in mining of iron ore. All three shifts in the open cast in the town of Komsomolsk, of more than 300 workers each are now involved in industrial action. Some railway locomotive drivers and workers on the iron ore concentrating factory have joined in solidarity.

The action started on 1st August at 10am when the workers at the ore-dressing open cast pit started at first with a go-slow and work-to-rule. The action began when haul trucks drivers on their way down to the 305 meter deep quarry reduce speed of the vehicles from normal 40-45 km/h to the more safe 10-15 km/h. Excavator and bulldozer operators, as well as drilling technicians then joined the action in solidarity. Within 24 hours of the workers’ action total rock production had fallen by less than 60% of normal volume. This impact of the workers resistance is continuing.

the ‘social wage’ and the hackney nurseries campaign

Camille Barbagallo and Nic Beuret look at the role of public services and how the cuts axe is falling

Childcare services in the UK are under attack. Childcare services across the country are being defunded, abolished and downgraded. In this article we start with the specific cuts in Hackney to nursery places and analyse these cuts in the context of the gendered nature of the ConDem’s austerity budget. We explore both what enables these cuts to happen now and what their effects will be and conclude with some reflections on possible paths of resistance within the current crisis of care.

Let’s be honest – the public services that are being cut include things that we need, but we hate how they are given to us: like unemployment benefits. They also involve jobs that we rely on but resent having to do. But what is also true is that they are part of a ‘social wage’ fought for and won by pervious generations.

london forum on big flame

This August The Commune in London has staged a series of meetings on communist organisation, and we have already looked at the examples of Kamunist Kranti in India and 1960s-70s Italian group Potere Operaio.

The final meeting in the series is on Big Flame, a  British libertarian Marxist group in the 1970s. The discussion will be led off by a worker active in Merseyside car factories at that time. All welcome – the meeting is from 7pm on Monday 30th August at the Lucas Arms, Grays Inn Road, near King’s Cross (note change from original venue).

is unison ready to fight the cuts?

A UNISON branch official looks at the attacks on the left within the union at a time when public sector workers face major cuts

This summer Dave Prentis won his bid to become General Secretary of UNISON for the third time with 67.2% of the vote (based on a very poor 14% turn out). As a speaker at conference Dave Prentis often talks left.

However, despite his fine words, he has been at the helm during a period when the left have suffered serious attacks from the leadership. Several very well known and respected left wingers in UNISON have faced harassment and even expulsion on trumped up and unfounded charges. Some of these instances are well known amongst the wider labour movement.

protest against marks and spencer over indian sweatshop

Join a solidarity protest in front of the Marks and Spencer store, 173 Oxford Street, London – 11 am, Saturday 4th September 2010

From a press release of Mazdoor Ekta Manch, a union based in Gurgaon:

Workers of the Viva Global Factory, including women were brutally beaten up with hockey sticks and lathis [canes] by goons called in by the Management of Viva Global, the Gurgaon based sweatshop apparel house. The incident happened on 23rd of August 2010 between 9:30 and 10:00 AM when workers were to enter the premises of the Factory, as part of a tripartite agreement between the Management of Viva Global, the Labour Department and the Garment and Allied Workers Union (GAWU).

Viva Global is a major supplier of apparel to ‘reputed’ multinational superbrands such as Marks and Spencer. There have been serious violations of labour laws and human rights at the Viva Global Factory. The Management has been using strong arm tactics against union leaders, representatives of workers etc., each time that the workers have demanded that basic amenities and legal wages be given to them. On the 21st of Aug 2010, at 6.00 PM, contract workers were locked out of the Factory in an attempt to illegally terminate them.

Our demands are: All workers be reinstated and the management of the Viva Global apologise to the workers.

cuts agenda tough on peckham

Ahead of our September 11th assembly on the crisis, Sharon Borthwick writes on the changes in social composition and public services in Peckham in recent years, and the meaning of the crisis and cuts plans.

The sign outside Academy at Peckham reads, “Our facilities are unparalleled by any other school in Britain”. And well they might be! But the ‘facilities’ spoken of here are nothing to do with the vast playing fields of Eton. There are no well-stocked libraries. They can’t boast a rowing lake or a Latin Master. Learning for learning’s sake is not the object here. The facilities consist of things such as a “Professional Hospitality and Catering Suite” and a “Hairdressing and Beauty Salon”.

The children of Peckham are being told what career paths they are cut out for. Though academies are mostly funded by public money, Lord Harris of Peckham is the chief ‘sponsor’ of Academy at Peckham and nine other South London Academies; he likes them all to bear his name. Harris is a Conservative member of the House of Lords and contributes substantial donations to his party; he is also a vocal opponent of gay rights. The Academy at Peckham is set to make job cuts, specifically in support staff.

a syndicalism for the 21st century?

Sheila Cohen looks at the Great Unrest and the meaning for syndicalism today

It seems unlikely that the centenary of the 1910-14 Great Unrest will gain much attention in the media – if, indeed, it gets a mention at all. But, for supporters of workers’ revolutionary self-activity, this is an anniversary to remember.