💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › mike-hargis-european-alternative-unions-meet.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:42:59. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: European Alternative Unions Meet Author: Mike Hargis Date: 1992 Language: en Topics: anarcho-syndicalism, Libertarian Labor Review, Europe, trade unions, reportback Source: Retrieved on April 19, 2005 from https://web.archive.org/web/20050419151504/http://www.syndicalist.org/archives/llr1-13/13d.shtml Notes: From Libertarian Labor Review #13, Summer 1992
The following report is based on Jacques Toubles’ article, “Recontre
europeene des syndicats alternatifs,” published in January in Le Monde
Libertaire.
A “Meeting of European Alternative Trade Unions” was held in Barcelona,
Spain, Nov. 29 through Dec. 1, 1991, sponsored by the Spanish General
Confederation of Workers (CGT). Attending the three day conference were
delegations from union confederations such as the Swedish Workers
Central (SAC) and the Romande Confederation of Labor; autonomous
workers’ groups such as the Italian base committees (Cobas) and an Irish
anarcho-syndicalist group; local trade unions or federations affiliated
with “official” union centers, for example a delegation of railway
workers from the French Confederation of Democratic Unions (CFDT) and
the Proof Readers Union of the French General Confederation of Workers
(CGT); some organizations formed by fellow workers excluded from the
main confederations such as the SUD Postal Federation; and, finally, a
delegation from the Moscow section of the Russian Confederation of
Anarcho-syndicalists (KAS) and some militants from the Russian
Solidarity trade union.
In discussing the developing political/economic landscape in Europe, the
Spanish CGT delegates noted that the new order being constructed in the
various Ministerial cabinets, in Brussels, and in the board rooms of the
multi-national corporations will undoubtedly mean an increase in
inequality and poverty within nations and in different regions of the
continent, as well as reduction of trade union rights and restrictions
on the right to strike. It was estimated that two million people would
be added to the fifteen million already unemployed. In addition, there
are at least six million workers toiling under temporary or part-time
work contracts, and fifty million people living in poverty. The drive
towards the privatization of public services is going ahead, and will
most likely result in a further increase in part- time and temporary
contract labor. Underneath all of this is developing a parallel society
made up of 20 million immigrants.
The Swedish delegation made special note of the changing division of
labor being constructed and the greater stratification of the labor
force that this will engender. They see the working class being
sub-divided into three groupings: 1) a highly skilled stratum of
technical workers with secure employment organized within corporatist
trade unions whose only function will be to protect their status; 2) a
less skilled and more precariously employed group; and 3) a totally
marginalized group without skills and without employment. Such a
development would make achieving political and economic unity among the
three groups very difficult, which would be to the advantage of the
capitalists an the State.
The fellow workers from the Italian Cobas discussed the growing
importance of the base committees, which are primarily found in the
public services but are also present in the metal industry. In the past
few years the committees have proven their ability to successfully
mobilize workers within local branches of industry and even within
entire industries both on a regional and on a national level, thus
making them a force to be reckoned with. Thanks to this type of
organization (the base committee) a number of trades — teachers, rail
workers — have been able to successfully resist employers’ plans to
reduce their standard of living and working. On the railroads, for
example, Italy is the only nation in Western Europe where the practice
of operating locomotives with two crew members is still in force, thanks
largely to the efforts of the base committees in mobilizing resistance
to the attempts to introduce one-person operation. This hard struggle
has twice resulted in the conscription of the entire rail workforce by
the government, something that hadn’t been seen since the fascist era.
Of particular interest at the conference was the report of the Russian
delegates of the KAS. The KAS comrade acknowledged that the organization
was going through a difficult period with a number of fellow workers
leaving the organization. These defections can be explained by the fact
that when the KAS was formed there were no other libertarian groupings
in the USSR and some joined the group without really understanding what
the KAS was all about. When the organization defined itself, in its
congress, as an organization made up of anarcho-syndicalists and
anarchists engaged within the workers movement, those who disagreed drew
the proper conclusion and withdrew from the organization, not without
first accusing the KAS of being bureaucrats, etc.