mobilizations and uprisings

By Otto Fors - Left Voice, February 1, 2023

Last week, energy workers in France provided free energy for hospitals, schools, low-income households, and libraries. They show that the working class holds the keys to the economy, and can put these resources in the service of society.

France has been roiled by protests over President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to raise the retirement age. On both January 19 and 31, over a million people across the country took part in demonstrations, and last week, workers with the CGT union took a more radical approach: they provided free energy as part of so-called “Robin Hood” operations.

Many members of the CGT, one of France’s largest labor unions, work in key energy sectors like oil refineries and power grids. In workers’ assemblies in Paris, Marseilles, Lille, and other cities, they unanimously decided to provide free energy for low-income households, hospitals, schools, and other public buildings and services. Workers also cut power for several hours to the office of a lawmaker from Macron’s party, disabled speed cameras, and manipulated electricity and gas meters to reduce bills for small business owners.

The protests against pension reforms and the CGT’s actions come as workers in France face a cost-of-living crisis. Inflation stands at 7 percent, while energy prices have risen by 15 percent since the start of 2023.

By Kenny Stancil - Common Dreams, January 27, 2023

A new manifesto calls for building "a sustainable social pact for the 21st century" in which "our rights are guaranteed, not based on our ability to pay, or on whether a system produces profit, but on whether it enables all of us to live well together in peace and equality."

An international coalition made up of more than 200 trade unions and progressive advocacy groups on Thursday published the Santiago Declaration, a manifesto for "a complete overhaul of our global economic system."

The undeniably anti-neoliberal document proclaiming that "our future is public" is the product of a meeting held in Chile—the "laboratory of neoliberalism" where Milton Friedman and his University of Chicago acolytes' upwardly redistributive economic model was first imposed at gunpoint by Gen. Augusto Pinochet's military junta.

From November 29 to December 2, more than 1,000 organizers from over 100 countries gathered in Santiago and virtually to germinate a left-wing movement against "the dominant paradigm of growth, privatization, and commodification."

"We are at a critical juncture," the manifesto begins. "At a time when the world faces a series of crises, from the environmental emergency to hunger and deepening inequalities, increasing armed conflicts, pandemics, rising extremism, and escalating inflation, a collective response is growing."

"Hundreds of organizations across socioeconomic justice and public services sectors—from education and health services, to care, energy, food, housing, water, transportation, and social protection—are coming together to address the harmful effects of commercializing public services, to reclaim democratic public control, and to reimagine a truly equal and human rights-oriented economy that works for people and the planet," reads the document. "We demand universal access to quality, gender-transformative, and equitable public services as the foundation of a fair and just society."

By Chaumtoli Huq - Pace Environmental Law Review, January 2023

Web Editor's Note: This publication contains an error, identifying the International Woodworkers of America (IWA), a CIO union, as an IWW affiliate. This is inaccurate. The IWA was cofounded by many radical workers, including (but not limited to) members of the IWW, but it was never an IWW union itself.

The Green New Deal harkens us back to the nostalgia of the New Deal era when a diverse and comprehensive set of federal legislation, agencies, programs, public work projects and financial reforms were implemented between 1933 and 1939 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to promote economic recovery. Among them, relevant to this essay’s focus on labor, was the passage of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) which provided legal protection to organizing, and supporting unionization and collective bargaining. However, due to political compromises, categories of workers including domestic workers and agricultural workers, who were mostly Black and immigrants were excluded from the NLRA’s coverage. Despite these exclusions, it was a time when the New Deal state seemed to be a strong ally of workers and the labor movement. Industrial peace and security were dominant narratives fueling much of the New Deal legislation. This industrial peace and security rhetoric suppressed the radicalization and rising militancy of the labor movement of the time such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Moreover, the law was actively used to prosecute criminally radical unionists and through other extra-judicial means.

New Deal policies solidified one form of unionism, referred to as business or contract unionism which is based on the idea that the union or labor movement brokers wages, benefits from its members, through collective bargaining agreements, and unions become servicers or administrators of those benefits. Such an approach heavily defers to law, state and legislative spaces as the protector of labor rights; thereby, ceding power away from worker or community control. In contrast, social unionism espoused the view that the role of the labor movement was to build worker power which gives them greater control over their livelihood, workplaces and environment. This view encompassed a wide spectrum of political ideologies and strategies. Social unionism broadly advanced that unions should address the economic interests of its members, encourage them to be active on broader issues of social justice and engage with the state to pass protective worker legislation.18 Under the social unionism view, syndicalists like IWW were skeptical or at most contemptuous of the legal system and emphasized the direct role of the union as agents of social change and governance.

Read the report (PDF).

By Marcus Barnett - Labor Notes, November 18, 2022

In Britain today, anyone asking a worker about the direction the country is headed will be unlikely to receive a printable answer.

Stumbling from crisis to crisis, the country is on its third prime minister of the year. Energy bills have skyrocketed by 96 percent since last winter, and rent has shot up by as much as 20 percent, while inflation—which currently stands at 12.3 percent—has been predicted to rise as high as 18 percent by the first few months of 2023.

This is happening in a country which was the first in Western Europe to register 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus and has already been subject to brutal austerity measures that have wrecked the social fabric. An analysis by the Trades Unions Congress (TUC, the British equivalent of the AFL-CIO) released earlier this year found that British workers earned £60 ($70) less per month in real wages in 2021 than at the start of the financial crisis in 2008—the longest wage slump since the Napoleonic Era.

Where employers have offered any wage increases to combat inflation, they have still represented significant pay cuts in real terms. Not that the same rules apply to them; while pay offers to workers have generally veered between 2 and 6 percent, the average pay of an FTSE 100 chief executive shot up 23 percent this year, with record bonuses being dished out. (The FTSE 100 is made up of the largest companies on the London Stock Exchange).

One such recipient was Philip Jansen, the CEO of BT Group, Britain’s largest provider of internet and phone services. BT reported £1.3 billion in profits this year, while Jansen netted a £3.5 million pay package—a 32 percent increase. He now makes 86 times more than the average BT employee.

Yet after six brief meetings with representatives of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), Jansen called off discussions and unilaterally imposed an insulting £1,500 ($1,770) increase to annual base salaries—which amounts to a pay cut in real terms for the company’s 40,000 call center workers and field technicians. The call center workforce is paid so poorly that some have become increasingly reliant on workplace food banks.

Another was Simon Thompson, CEO of Royal Mail Group, the UK postal service (which was privatized a decade ago under the Conservative-Liberal coalition government). In June, Thompson—who earns £62,750 a month—awarded himself a “short-term” bonus of £142,000. Shortly afterwards, the company informed its 115,000 workers it would be unilaterally raising wages by just 2 percent—a drastic pay cut in the context of the country’s cost-of-living crisis. That’s despite Royal Mail workers generating record annual profits of £758 million for the company.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, October 30, 2022

Hundreds of thousands people marched and rallied October 1 in over 50 towns and cities across the UK on a National Day of Action protesting the soaring cost of living and inaction on the climate crisis. The actions were called by Enough is Enough, a 700,000 member campaign supported by the trade union movement and community groups including tenant unions and foodbanks. Its five demands are:

1. A real pay raise
2. Slash energy bills
3. End food poverty
4. Decent homes for all
5. Tax the rich

Climate campaigners brought London’s famed Westminster Bridge to a standstill. Don’t Pay UK encouraged householders to stop paying their bills if the government does not offer further support to families. 50,000 workers from four postal and railroad unions struck for wage increases to make up for inflation.

On October 16, 140,000 people marched through Paris protesting the rising cost of living and government inaction against climate change. They demanded massive investment in climate action, higher wages, an emergency freeze on the prices of groceries, rent, and energy, and greater taxation of windfall profits of corporations. A leader of the action called on protesters to “not allow themselves to be divided by their skin color, their religion, political affiliation or indifference.” Some of the demonstrators wore yellow vests, the symbol of disruptive actions that started in 2018 by protesting against government climate protection policies. The recent demonstration dovetailed with a strike by refinery workers, an impending strike by transportation workers, and a call for a general strike by France’s largest trade unions.

By Larry Williams, Jr. - Labor Network for Sustainability, October 30, 2022

Dear friends,

We’re celebrating the recent defeat of US Senator Joe Manchin’s “Dirty Deal.” This was a proposal to undermine environmental reviews and fast-track fossil fuel projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

Today, we’d like to lift up the board members of the Labor Network for Sustainability who fought tooth and nail to oppose this Dirty Deal. LNS Board Members Jennifer Krill and Edgar Franks recently joined an action in the Hart Senate Building in Washington DC, in which Jennifer was arrested in an act of civil disobedience to oppose the deal.

Jennifer Krill stated: “Prioritizing the climate crisis means prioritizing environmental justice. Legislation that leads to more drilling and mining is precisely the kind of political side-dealing that has set us back from meeting our urgent climate goals. We’re grateful that members of Congress have taken action to stop the exploitation of frontline communities and stand up to the fossil fuel and mining industries. Congress has sacrificed people for corporate profits for far too long.”

Edgar Franks stated: “We as a farmworker union want to stand on the side of environmental justice. We are one of the communities that are bearing the brunt of climate change and also some of the most disenfranchised politically. The Dirty Deal was filled with mechanisms that further widen the divide where we will continue to be sacrificed for profits to the fossil fuel industry. We look for the time where we will not have to pit environment over jobs. As unions we need to be present and demand real solutions that are led by affected communities.”

But of course, this victory does not belong to us. It belongs to the many environmental justice leaders from across the country who’ve taken a stand against the Dirty Deal. It belongs to the communities in the Gulf of Mexico and coastal Alaska and everywhere in between. And it belongs to you.

To every member of the Labor Network for Sustainability—thank you. Whether you signed a petition, emailed or called your Senator, marched in a rally, risked arrest, or donated to support the cause, this is your victory.

We know the fight’s not over. Manchin will stop at nothing to cater to the fossil fuel industry, and we expect him to try to force through a similar deal later this year. But in the meantime, we can celebrate this moment and take stock of all we hold dear.

Thanks for being part of this movement.

By various - Unicorn Riot, October 2022

Defending the Atlanta Forest: Behind the Movement to Stop Cop City from Unicorn Riot on Vimeo.

By Roger Silverman - Facts for Working People, June 28, 2022

A new mood is sweeping Britain. The magnificent TUC march last week marked the re-entry of the working class back to the forefront of British history. A wave of protest has begun, with strikes of railways, airport ground staff, communications workers, nurses, GPs, even barristers…

Britain is ruled by a regime which drunkenly staggers from one hollow theatrical gesture to the next – “getting Brexit done” (at punitive cost), tearing up the Northern Ireland protocol, blocking all legal routes to asylum, deporting migrants to Rwanda, scrapping the Human Rights Act … and now hoping to smash a resurgent trade union resistance and tame the work force.

An all-out class war is on the cards. Legislation is in the pipeline allowing the wholesale use of agency workers – scabs – to break strikes – something that even Thatcher had never dared. Johnson and his faction of the ruling class are consciously plotting an all-out confrontation. A general strike is in the air – a deliberate provocation, just as in 1926.

It’s a fatal miscalculation. Then the ruling class could mobilise a mass strikebreaking force of jolly jingoistic volunteers to wave the flag and keep Britannia moving. Where will they find such an army now? Then they could recruit from a pool of professionals, middle class and youth. Today the “middle class” – previously privileged strata, but now squeezed by the monopolies or driven into opposition – are now among the most militant strikers. And the youth are overwhelmingly in rebellion.

While Johnson & Co. are desperately gambling on whipping up commuter resentment, a clear 58% today – almost two-thirds – support the RMT strike.

The working class is regathering its forces. It may be diminished in industrial concentration, but it is regaining cohesion. Society is becoming not less but MORE proletarianised.

By various Russian anarcho-syndicalists and anarchists - International Workers Association, January 13, 2022

Statement by Russian anarcho-syndicalists and anarchists on the situation in Kazakhstan

We, Anarcho-syndicalists and Anarchists of Russia express our full and complete solidarity with the social protest of the working people of Kazakhstan and send them our comradely greetings!

The current explosion of social protest in Kazakhstan, one of the most outstanding and brightest since the beginning of the new century, has become the apogee of the wave of the strike struggle of oil workers and other categories of workers in the country, which has not stopped since last summer.

The working people of Kazakhstan gradually recovered from the terrible massacre of the proletarians, organized in 2011 by the dictatorial regime of Nazarbayev, and began to consistently seek higher wages and the ability to create trade unions and other workers' associations. The poverty of the majority of the population, the cruel exploitation of labor, the rise in prices, daily oppression and lack of rights made the position of the working person unbearable and forced him to rise to protest actions.

The last straw was the layoffs of tens of thousands of oil workers in December 2021, the introduction of a "sanitary" dictatorship under the pretext of "fighting the pandemic" and a draconian increase in gas prices. On January 3, a general strike of workers began in the Mangistau region, which soon spread to other regions of the country. In the former capital of Kazakhstan, Almaty, clashes erupted between protesters and repressive forces; there are tens or even hundreds of people killed and wounded. During the protests, disadvantaged people, primarily young unemployed and internal migrants, committed acts of popular expropriation, destroying many large shopping centers, shops and bank branches. In a number of cases, the troops refused to open fire on the rebels.