Call to participate in 16 November International Day of Action against Workers Repression

By KMU International Department

While workers are the key to creating the world’s wealth circulating in society, they not only earn barely enough to subsist from one day to the next, they suffer from all forms of violence whenever they assert their basic right to live.

November 16 is not simply a sore point of commemoration of workers’ rights that are under attack, it has become a rallying cry to hold high the unfinished struggle of workers everywhere for justice and freedom. 16 November 2008 will mark the fourth-year anniversary of the infamous Hacienda Luisita Massacre during which seven striking farm workers, mill workers, and supporters were killed in a violent dispersal by police, military, and paid goons under the order of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s government. The day has since become a dark reminder of the ruthless repression workers are hit with when they take collective action not only in the Philippines, but in countries all over the world wherever workers are fighting back against U.S. imperialism and all kinds of exploitation and oppression.

The right to humane conditions at work, fair wages and benefits, job security, freedom of association, the right to collectively bargain and to strike, self-determination, and the end of discrimination are not just legitimate demands of workers and the trade union movement, they are internationally recognized rights that should be enjoyed by everyone regardless of a country’s level of development.

Protest actions by workers and people of the world have intensified in recent months and years against neoliberal economic policies and repressive measures being foisted on their backs. Workers are infuriated by slave-like wages, growing unemployment, privatization of state enterprises, soaring prices of basic needs, and so many other socioeconomic ills that violate their fundamental well-being to not just survive or exist, but to thrive and develop as humankind. The current global financial crisis is seen to further worsen these appalling conditions.

From political killings and intimidation, to massive retrenchment and work dismissals, to the demolitions of workers’ homes, to violations of the right to organize and to collective bargaining, to the criminalization of labor disputes, to frozen wages, unemployment and precarious work, an all-out front of repression of workers’ rights continues to be unleashed in an attempt to stifle growing resistance among workers and the broad masses of the people. The most severe attacks are seen in countries where the struggles are most intense and the people’s resistance is gaining strength. Not coincidentally, widespread arrests, massacres, tortures and other extreme forms of repression occur wherever big imperialist companies have a stronghold.

In the industrialized countries, governments seek to restrict trade union rights through changes in labor legislation, removing or restricting collective bargaining rights, the right to strike, or even the right to organize. Oppressed peoples and nations face the barefaced brutality of workers repression at its worst in outright killings, torture, assaults on picket lines, breaking up or violently dispersing demonstrations, illegal arrests and detention, grave threats, intimidation, abductions and harassment inflicted on leaders, members, and labor advocates of trade unions and informal workers’ organizations who are actively pursuing workers’ legitimate demands.

Police forces use brazen violence against protesters while trade union leaders are imprisoned in Turkey. In the first half of 2008, Musa Servi, International League of Peoples’ Struggle – International Coordinating Committee member and Chairman of the Trade Union of Leather Workers, was arrested twice with 44 others while organizing Desa Company workers who were preparing to strike. Excessive violence was used by Turkish riot police against trade unionists who wanted to participate in the Labor Day rally on 1 May 2008. A reported 530 demonstrators were detained and 38 people were injured, but actual figures could be much higher. Turkish police used clubs, pepper spray, tear gas, and red-dye water cannons to break up crowds of workers and students trying to reach Taksim Square.

In the Philippines, workers’ rights continue to be massively violated, and trade unionists and labor organizers are killed in the exercise of their rights. There are already 87 worker victims of political killings since 2001, five remain missing, and two leaders are still detained. The latest victim is Gerry Cristobal, a union leader and organizer ofSamahang Manggagawa ng EMI-YAZAKI (Workers’ Association in EMI-YAZAKI), who was ambushed and killed on March 10 of this year, after surviving a first assassination attempt on 28 April 2006 in Cavite. His killing, like all the others, has not been thoroughly investigated.

78 trade unionists were killed between 1 January and 31 December 2006 in Colombia which has the world’s most awful record in repression and killings of trade unionists. The sector worst affected was teaching, with 49 trade unionists murdered, followed by the agricultural sector, with nine trade unionists murdered. Impunity remained the main obstacle to the exercise of trade union rights in Colombia, given the involvement of paramilitary groups and national security officials in most of the assassinations of union organizers in recent years. The number of cases of harassment against Colombian trade unionists has also risen.

Examples of workers repression are found all over the world like the April 2008 arrest of over 600 immigrant workers from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan who were protesting against the United Arab Emirates Multinational Construction Company that did not give their salary for three months; or the weeks of strikes in November 2007 in France against pension reforms and days of riots that erupted in response to police brutality in working class suburbs; or the over 16,000, mostly women, textile workers in Swaziland, South Africa, on strike earlier this year in March with workers participating in marches who confronted police using clubs and teargas during which at least a dozen were reported injured. Everywhere that workers show collective forms of resistance, heavy-handed repression is the state’s cruel attack in defense of a moribund system desperate to survive the chronic crisis of the intensifying world disorder.

Workers resist and international day of action

But the rising tide of state repression against workers does not signify the strength of U.S. imperialism and its repressive rule around the world. Instead, it exposes its weakness by the extreme brutality it must resort to in order to maintain its ill-gotten wealth and power, and silence widespread opposition to its destructive nature. Where union struggle is solid and gaining support from workers and communities, the state’s use of military and force is stronger and more aggressive.

On 16 November 2008, let us declare in unison, from all corners of the globe our complete outrage to the vicious attacks that workers are hit hard by. Repressive mechanisms and the states that perpetuate them used against union leaders and members in South Korea who were issued warrants of arrests and subjected to body searches at the entrance of their union office in July this year, to the arrest of Liliany Obando from the FENSUAGRO (agricultural workers union) in Colombia on 8 August 2008, to the six workers who face charges for participating in a protest against illegally low wages of textile mills workers in Pakistan, to the denial of workers’ basic democratic rights of freedom of speech and assembly by the repressive Islamic regime, let us demand for an immediate end to the persecution and intimidation of workers and trade union activists.

In response to the resolution from the International League of Peoples’ Struggle – Commission 5 (Commission on Workers’ Rights) to declare November 16 as the International Day of Action Against Workers’ Repression, we urge all democratic, anti-imperialist, progressive forces and freedom-loving people around the world to join us this coming 16 November 2008 in raising high our cries for justice. We hope to commemorate not only the martyred workers of Hacienda Luisita but all worker victims of repression throughout the world. Let the spirit of our fallen comrades’ lives inspire countless more to take up the banner to not give up in times of adversity, but rather, to advance forward workers’ demands for social justice, decent wages, work, and livelihood.

What you can do:

Hold a protest action in any area which you deem possible.

Organize a dialogue with the human rights commission in your country where you can directly bring your concern regarding the widespread repression of workers rights.

Come up with organizational statements condemning workers repression and send it your government, embassies and or human rights commissions

Make online petitions against workers repression

Send a solidarity message and/or financial support to the victims of workers’ repression and their families through the International League of Peoples’ Struggle – Commission on Workers Rights.

Organize press conferences focusing on the issue of workers rights violations

Organize various forms of actions such as candle-lighting, distribution of leaflets, forums and public meeting, streamer-hanging or any other forms of actions in your capacity.

Related

* http://www.kilusangmayouno.org/