Social struggles are continuing everywhere in Europe
The French people keep fighting against the pension reform they do not want, and Central Europeans challenge multinational companies who see them as a cheap workforce.
‘Listen to the wrath of the people’. A demonstration in Paris, 11 February. Photo by EPSU union.
11 February was the third consecutive day of mobilisation against the French pension reform. Again, thousands of workers marched in Paris and other big (and smaller) cities, demanding that Emmanuel Macron give up his reform plans and instead look for money in the richest pockets. The alliance of French trade unions is strong as it has rarely been, and Laurent Brun, the leader of CGT Railway Workers’ Union, told us more about the popular sentiments and further mobilisation plans.
CGT unionists marching under the banner ‘Let’s make the capital retreat - pension age at 60!’. Photo from Twitter/EPSUUnions
In Central and Eastern Europe, having experienced a tough transition period from ‘real socialism’, mass protests like these in France seem unthinkable at the moment. Nevertheless, seeds of discontent are to be spotted especially in huge, multinational-owned factories. There, skilled workers ask legitimate questions: why do their wages remain the same, while prices and rents become higher and higher?
In Žatec in Northern Czechia, Nexen Tyre workers staged a week-long strike after long negotiations about the wages did not succeed. As Veronika Sušová-Salminen reports,
“Real wages in Czechia fell by almost 10%, and inflation averaged 15.1%. The fact that in such a context, the 8.3% (sic!) wage increase and the better remuneration for night and weekend work became the subject of disputes between employees and the employer, which had to be resolved by a strike, is also quite telling about the status of labour and the perceptions of foreign investors in the Czech Republic, for whom wages for human labour are simply a cost”
Nexen workers and their social-democratic supporters during the strike. ‘For honest work, a decent pay’ reads the banner in the middle. Photo from Daniela Ostra's archive.
Meanwhile in Poland, labour unionists continue the battle for better work & pay conditions in the retail giant Amazon. Recent events in the ongoing industrial dispute between Amazon and Workers’ Initiative trade union might suggest that the multinational would really do a lot, and possibly even break the law, not to allow the unionists to mobilize staff. Blanka Hasterok, a labour activist from Katowice, Poland, recalls the story, interviewed by Małgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat.
‘Amazon wages in Poland are not competitive. They are close to the lowest national wage. This year in Poland we will have two increases in the minimum hourly rate and if Amazon’s wages remain at the current level, the minimum wage will practically catch up with this ‘competitive earning rate’ the company boasts about. And we are talking about one of the largest and richest companies in the world, whose founder is flying into space for fun’ - Ms. Hasterok says.
We offer also a bit of theoretical insight into what is neoliberalism. This term, which has a meaning, is too often used just as a general umbrella term (or a pejorative name of modern capitalism).
- Often people equate neoliberalism with some sort of market-oriented policies, liberalization, privatization, deregulation. But neoliberalism is also a political project. It is a project of thinking how to shape society and to shield the decisions of individuals, or rather companies, enterprises, from the power of majorities. A very old idea alive in conservative elites - says Aldo Madariaga, Chilean political scientist, in the newest video Cross-Border Talk.
Madariaga is the author of Neoliberal Resilience, a book in which he explains how the system, built to preserve the interests of one section of capitalist class, is able to survive crises and secure itself from people’s attempts to rebuild politics on more egalitarian principles.
The system might defend its positions, but the reality is becoming so unbearable for people everywhere in the world, that they would not give up the struggle. And we will be there to report on it.