The European strikes and the trade unions

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The European strikes and the trade unions
5 March 2010

Last week was marked by two significant developments. A strike wave
hit Europe as workers in a series of countries began to demonstrate
their opposition to the austerity measures demanded by the European
Union and the banks.

In all countries, the trade unions responded by isolating and
suppressing the workers’ actions and closing ranks with their
respective governments and the European financial elite. The central
concern of the unions was to prevent the working people of Europe from
uniting in a common struggle against their common enemy—the European
bourgeoisie and its agents in the national governments and the
European Union.

On Monday of last week, 4,500 pilots employed by Germany’s biggest
airline, Lufthansa, went on strike. On the same day, air traffic
controllers in France began strike action, while workers at Total’s
oil refineries continued their national walkout. In Great Britain,
flight attendants at British Airways voted by over 80 percent in favor
of a strike.

On Tuesday, large demonstrations were held in Madrid, Barcelona and
Valencia protesting the cost-cutting measures introduced by the
Socialist Party (PSOE) government of Prime Minister Jose Luis
Rodriguez Zapatero.

On Wednesday, some 2 million workers took part in a general strike in
Greece that brought the country to a halt for 24 hours. All flights
into and out of Greece were cancelled when air traffic controllers
joined the strike.

In the Czech Republic, the unions announced that public transport
would be brought to a standstill starting March 1, and Portuguese
unions prepared for a one-day public sector strike on March 4 to
protest a freeze on wages.

The British Independent newspaper warned that the eruption of strikes
and protests heralded the biggest wave of rebellion “experienced on
the continent since the revolutionary upheavals of 1968.”

The unions, which had called the actions under immense pressure from
below, hoped thereby to allow the workers to let off steam while they
worked to contain working class resistance and buy time for their
respective governments.

When the German pilots’ union, Cockpit, realised it was standing at
the head of what could become a massive European-wide movement, it
called off its planned four-day strike after just one day.

At the same time, Germany’s two biggest trade unions, the engineering
and industrial union, IG Metall, and the public service union, Verdi,
agreed to extended contracts for their 5 million members that will
impose a cut in real wages.

In France, the Stalinist-dominated General Confederation of Labor
(CGT) called off the national strike against Total, capitulating to
the company’s plans to close its facility in Dunkirk.

In Britain, the Unite union assured British Airways that it would not
strike during the Easter holiday period and would restrict any
industrial action to isolated strikes.

Both of the main trade union federations in Greece, the private sector
GSSE and the public sector ADEDY, support the social democratic PASOK
government of Prime Minister George Papandreou and have issued
statements declaring the readiness of their members to make sacrifices
to ease the state’s debt crisis.

Three days after the general strike in Greece, the Czech unions called
off the planned strike by public transport workers.

Definite political conclusions must be drawn from the treacherous role
of the unions from the very outset of a new movement of working class
struggle in Europe and internationally.

Under conditions of the globalisation of capitalist production, the
trade unions, which are wedded to a nationalist perspective, are
incapable of defending even the most basic interests of the working
class. They have been transformed into direct agencies of the
corporate-financial elite and the state.

In the boom period of the last century, the unions were able, despite
their defense of capitalism and their national programmes, to extract
limited wage concessions and social reforms, but this period has long
since ended. The gains that workers were able to win through the
unions have proved to be temporary. In these old organisations,
workers now face enemies no less implacable than the employers and the
state.

Even before the outbreak of the current economic crisis, the unions
had supported the European Union and the introduction of the euro.
They hailed the reintroduction of capitalism into Eastern Europe 20
years ago, and sent their functionaries to the East in order to help
keep wages there low, thereby assisting the European ruling elite in
driving down wages in the West.

The international banks that unleashed the crisis are now determined
to make the working population foot the bill for their speculative
losses. With working class opposition growing, the unions are
concerned above all with blocking the international unification of
workers and their development in a socialist direction.

The unions’ present role is the culmination of a long history. Already
100 years ago they stood in the right wing of the workers’ movement,
and openly sided with reaction during periods of revolutionary class
struggle.

For years, the outstanding leader of the Marxist wing of the German
Social Democratic Party (SPD), Rosa Luxemburg, was banned from
speaking at trade union congresses. During the debate over the mass
strike at the beginning of the twentieth century, the hatred of the
trade union leadership for the revolutionary wing of the SPD assumed
hysterical forms.

A course was set that had devastating consequences: agreement to war
credits in 1914, a no-strike pact during World War I, and finally, in
April 1933, the offer by the General Federation of German Trade Unions
(ADGB) to collaborate with the Hitler regime.

The rightward evolution of the trade unions arises out of fundamental
features of this form of organisation. In his lecture “Marxism and the
Trade Unions,” the chairman of the World Socialist Web Site
international editorial board, David North, stated: “Standing on the
basis of capitalist production relations, the trade unions are, by
their very nature, compelled to adopt an essentially hostile attitude
toward the class struggle. Directing their efforts toward securing
agreements with employers that fix the price of labour power and
determine the general conditions in which surplus value will be pumped
out of the workers, the trade unions are obliged to guarantee that
their members supply their labour power in accordance with the terms
of the negotiated contracts. As Gramsci noted, ‘The union represents
legality, and must aim to make its members respect that legality.’

“The defence of legality means the suppression of the class struggle,
which, in the very nature of things, means that the trade unions
ultimately undermine their ability to achieve even the limited aims to
which they are officially dedicated. Herein lies the contradiction
upon which trade unionism flounders.”

It is necessary for workers to break from these outmoded and
reactionary organisations and build new, genuinely popular and
democratic organisations of struggle. At the same time, there must be
a break with the nationalist and class collaborationist conceptions
that underlie the unions.

The draconian austerity measures in Greece are the prelude to historic
attacks on the working class across Europe, in the US and
internationally. A new period of revolutionary struggle is emerging.
This must be prepared consciously through the building of an
international socialist movement of the working class to fight for
workers’ power and the reorganisation of economic life along
democratic and egalitarian lines.

Ulrich Rippert

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/pers-m05.shtml

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