Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT)

By Staff - Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, May 9, 2023

Last week, we looked at the Boric administration’s launch of the National Lithium Strategy, the creation of a National Lithium Company, and some initial responses by trade unions. In this bulletin, we’ll highlight clips of interviews from diverse trade union perspectives on the role of the labour movement in the lithium sector. 

By Roberto Lobos and Horacio Fuentes - Constramet, April 2023

President Gabriel Boric presented his National Lithium Strategy, the great absentee in his speech were the workers of Chile, and we can not fail to point out our concern about it. This is why we want to express our opinion on the national chain and express some of the ideas of the workers' world.

In the more than twenty minutes that the President's speech lasted, several questions remained for the world of labour. The decision to move forward with the creation of a National Lithium Company, a campaign promise cast into doubt less than a week ago by the same government team, was welcomed. Yesterday's position, much more in line with the sentiments of the workers, is weighted for its positive value. It is clearly a decision that will have to be defended against the more neoliberal positions, which will oppose the strengthening of the state, which for us still needs to be delimited and clarified in greater depth.

The decision to transform Chile into the "main Lithium producer in the world" is an important bet; accompanying the energy transition process together with Green Hydrogen is part of the strategic development plan that CONSTRAMET and Plebeya have been working on, together with the need to discuss the current situation of copper in Chile in terms of the new energy matrix of the contemporary world-system. We highlight the decision to participate through the State in the entire production process by means of a national company, which is the only possible way towards redistributive economic growth.

With regard to exploration, exploitation and value addition from a "virtuous public-private partnership", there are several questions that plague us. Starting with the content of the link itself. Any process of dialogue between the state and the private sector must include the participation of workers. The greater the participation of the social world in sovereign decision-making in our country, the greater the strength of the public world in the negotiation process, the same for Codelco, today weakened to carry out the plan presented.

By Cuevas Zambrano and Staff - Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, April 2023

Cristián Cuevas Zambrano is a trade union leader and activist of the Chilean left. He is currently director of the Federation of Mining Workers Fetramin and Spokesperson of the National Coordination Committee of Codelco's contractor workers. Previously he was one of the founders of the Confederation of Copper Workers CTC and was its first President for six years. In addition, he was a leader of the Executive Board of the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores CUT Chile.

TUED: Some analysts have taken issue with the characterisation of a "nationalisation" of lithium with historical parallels to the nationalisation of copper. They say it is NOT a classic expropriation but a public-private partnership in which the state-owned company collaborates with the capital. Could you clarify this characterisation for us?

Cristian Cuevas (CC): Nationalisation is a concept that is commonly used to define a process of rescue or expropriation of productive activities in the hands of national or international private capital. This occurred with Law 17.450, promoted by President Salvador Allende, which expressly stated that "the state has absolute, exclusive, inalienable and imprescriptible control of all mines, meadows, metalliferous sands, salt flats, coal and hydrocarbon deposits and other fossil substances, with the exception of surface clays.

The spirit of Allende’s law was aimed at advancing our sovereignty and economic independence, which was completely disregarded during Pinochet's Civil-Military Dictatorship with the enactment of a Constitutional Organic Law that allowed mining concessions to private companies.

However, the Pinochet government issued a supreme decree decreeing lithium as a non-concessionary product given its strategic character in defence (base material that allows the creation of nuclear fusion). Therefore, the Boric administration’s announcements regarding the creation of the national lithium company are intended to allow the State to reclaim the sector and enter into the process of production and development of products made from this raw material.

TUED: In his announcement, Boric stated that the National Lithium Company will articulate public-private partnerships. What are the expected consequences of such a public-private partnership arrangement? What role should trade unions play in developing an alternative?

CC: President Gabriel Boric's announcement reflects the Government's inability to confront the national and foreign business sectors that seek to profit from this important mineral resource, the consequence of which is that the State will not capture for itself 100% of the value generated by lithium, handing the private sector a very good deal. Moreover, this government's surrender is reflected in the declarations of the Minister of Finance Mario Marcel, who only a couple of days ago pointed out as feasible the possibility that some salt flats could be fully exploited by the private sector.

The role that some trade unions have played through public statements, they have come out to reject this public-private partnership because it harms the interests of the State of Chile. However, the weakness of the Chilean trade union movement and the obsession with the CUT is a major constraint for the mobilisation of workers and society in defence of lithium and our common goods.

By staff - Central Única dos Trabalhadores, March 2021

The defense of a trade unionism that fights for a fairer model of society for workers has always been a principle that guided the debates and actions of CUT Brasil. Over the years, the unionism of CUT-Brasil has understood that the defense of the environment and of a model of sustainable development is in the interest of the working class and this topic has become an issue of growing importance. The 13th CONCUT (National Congress of the CUT-Brasil) approved in its resolutions the defense of a just transition, advancing even further in the debate and struggle for a model of society that avoids the climate and environmental crisis and guarantees jobs and rights for the working class.

The booklet “Just Transition: a trade union proposal to address the climate and social crisis” comes at a time when the working class is facing a challenge of containing the unbridled advance of the destruction of the environment and the climate crisis, while defending democracy and its rights against attacks by capital and the extreme right. As the result of a partnership with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the booklet aims to identify the main specificities of the just transition agenda for CUT-Brasil and the Brazilian working class, in addition to spreading the debate among trade unions, leaders, workers and to strengthen the fight against the production model that exploits the poorest and destroys the environment and our future.

The model imposed by capital causes unemployment, poverty and hunger, at the same time that it destroys entire biomes and threatens to cause permanent damage to the planet, increasing the risks for the working class. For the richest, it is possible to pay for housing, health care and other diverse protections against the problems caused by the climate crisis, such as desertification, floods and pollution. For the working class, avoiding the climate crisis is a necessity for survival.

Although the topic of climate change has many technical terms, in this booklet we seek to use a familiar and accessible language for the entire Brazilian working class.

Read the entire statement (PDF).

By staff - Central Única dos Trabalhadores, December 2021

The Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) was present at COP 26, which took place in November, in Glasgow, Scotland. In this bulletin we expose our performance and select analyses and content considered relevant by our Central to follow the discussion from the perspective of the working class.

Due to the urgency of a global action to contain the advance of the climate crisis and face its impacts the COPs become key spaces of discussion but we follow them critically due to the limitations of presenting real solutions.
The pre-COP 26 statements of the Trade Union Confederation of Workers of the Americas (CSA) and the Belem Charter Group point out what the key discussions were this year as well as the main criticisms. We also share the trade union agenda for COP 26 of the International Trade Union Confederation - ITUC.

Read the entire statement (PDF).

By staff - Central Única dos Trabalhadores, September 2021

Never before in the history of capitalism have the contradictions between the social character of production and the private appropriation of wealth been so great. The current environmental crisis is not an external fact independent of the functioning logic of this system, but the result of a process of exploitation and exhaustion, both of the working class and of nature, which each day points to the inexorable need for change in the economic and development model. We need to understand that the way out of the current crisis will only be possible if we subvert this logic of rentierism, hyper-consumerism and productivism.

In this context, the Brazilian trade union movement has the challenge of effectively incorporating the new needs of society and the class into its structure and political agenda. working people, updating the anti-capitalist confrontation from an ecosocialist, feminist and anti-racist perspective in the face of transformations in the world of work and the crisis in the system, intensified by the CODIV-19 pandemic.

These elements are in dialogue with the CUT unionism, which has defended an action where it is understood that the agendas of the world of work are the same as those of the world of work.

Read the entire statement (PDF).