>>> WORKERS POWER GLOBAL WEEK #3 E-newswire of the LRCI 28 April 2000 Subscribe to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.workerspower.com >> WELCOME TO ISSUE #3 issue of Workers Power Global Week, the English language e-newsletter of the LRCI. To unsubscribe mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send reports and responses to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please forward this to a comrade. >> LONG LIVE MAY DAY!!! This is the first May Day of the new millennium. Let's make it a big one. We will be too busy on the streets to post as-it-happens reports - but if you can't find it on http://www.workerspower.com try http://www.labourstart.org or http://www.yahoo.com (which has good strike/protest newsfeeds from AP and Reuters). A special solidarity message goes out to comrade Kuldip Bajwa, serving 21 months in a UK prison for his part in the defence of the June 18 anti-capitalist demonstration in the City of London. Send May Day greetings to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More details on http://www.workerspower.com/wpglobal/kuldip.html >> IRAN: CRACKDOWN ON REFORMIST PRESS. LEFT UNITES FOR MAYDAY PROTEST. Students poured onto the streets of Tehran this week to protest at the shutdown of 14 pro-reform newspapers and the arrest of journalists. Meanwhile the banned revolutionary left is preparing to mount a May Day protest in Tehran and is calling for international support. The attack on the press was launched by the conservative faction of the Islamic regime. It is using increasingly desperate measures to stop the reform wing led by President Mohamad Khatami. The right wing clerics lost badly in the first round of elections and have been fighting back by: a) annulling the results where the reformists won b) a wave of attacks and killings of opposition politicians c) a last minute set of anti-working class laws. This week the reactionary Council of Guardians set the date for the second round of elections as 5 May - forcing the reform movement to win again what it has already won at the polls. One of the papers closed - Sobh-e Emrouz - claimed to be in possession of a tape where senior Republican Guards (pro-reactionary armed forces) discussed options for a coup against Khatami. Much of what was predicted in that report has begun to happen. All of this focuses attention on the workers' movement and the left. Up to now the crisis in Iran has been a split within the Islamic regime itself. But with the opening of dual power between the two factions, the opportunity is ripe for an independent working class intervention into the crisis. The removal of labour law protection from 2.8 million workers in small enterprises will hit the working class hard. But, as the left publication Iranian Workers News wrote in March: "Under current conditions, because of an all engulfing economic recession in production, massive job losses and absence of any state or unofficial control, The Labour legislation has lost any meaning. From the time this legislation was passed [...] and yet didn't even manage to legitimise independent workers organisations, some 500,000 workers have lost their jobs in major industries, with no help from this legislation and many protest by workers has had no effect." The right wing crackdown has had its echo in the large factories. A factory worker in Alborz told the paper Kar va Kargar (16/1/2000): I was attacked because when I held a responsibility in the Shora , I defended the labour legislation and I wouldn't back down. For this reason the factory's security section, the factory's Islamic Bassij (a semi military militia) and the management told me off for defending the workers and they put so much pressure on me that eventually I lost my immunity so that I couldn't be elected to the Islamic Shora. This time they tried to beat me up to get me out of scene all together." Now, a united front of socialist and communist organisations, including Workers Left Unity has called for workers' demonstrations to celebrate May Day on Monday. The communiqu=E9 reads: "The demand for independent workers organisation, the right to strike, an end to individual and mass job losses from factories and workshops, equal rights for foreign workers (Afghani, Iraqi, Bangladeshi workers in Iran)with Iranian workers in all aspects of workers life, forbidding employment of children, payment of unpaid wages, condemnation of the anti labour policies of the government, the parliament and other state organisations such as Khaneh Kargar , Islamic councils in the workplace are the minimum demands of the Iranian working class and we emphasise our defence of these demands on the first of May 2000." >> USA: L.A. JANITORS STRIKE WINS - BUT MORE TO FIGHT FOR After three weeks on strike office cleaners in Los Angeles have voted to accept a new wage agreement of $1.90/hour. The deal falls far short of the $3 they originally claimed. But the US labor movement has hailed the victory as a turning point in the struggles of low-waged immigrant workers. The strike itself was an intense, high-profile struggle run under the control of the local bureaucracy of the Service Employees International Union. Low paid, mainly Latin American strikers won support - but not strike action - from office workers. Democratic Party politicians, including Al Gore, queued up from early in the strike to show support. And finally even high-profile office owners appeared alongside pickets, wearing the distinctive red union t-shirts! Meanwhile the SEIU nationally hastened to settle a series of parallel local wage claims. The high level of public support has been hailed by the media and union leaders alike as the "start of a new era" for low-paid workers' trade unionism. However, it is clear that the employers and union bosses collaborated to head off the strike before it gained national momentum. The actual wage settlement is well within what employers planned for. But while in pure economic terms the strike achieved much less than it could have, seen in the context of the wider class struggle it represented a significant advance. The strike itself involved daily marches and pickets. Other unions refused to cross picket lines and donated thousands of dollars to strike funds. It became a focus of solidarity, in part, because it was an offensive struggle where the workers set the agenda. =46urther strikes are brewing in San Francisco, Seattle, Milwaukee and Cleveland. (see http://www.seiu.org). However the hijacking of the strike by the liberal wing of the US ruling class also shows the urgency of US workers forging their own revolutionary political party independent of the Democrats. (http://www.workerspower.com/wpglobal/TI26USLabor.html) >> AUSTRIA: NEXT PHASE OF ANTI-HAIDER MOVEMENT From Mikhail Gatter, Ast, Vienna The protest movement against the far right wing coalition government of the Haider's FPO and the conservative =D6VP has not stopped. While at the beginning in early February thousands marched every day the high point was at the 300.000 strong demonstration on 19 February. Since then the movement has decelerated but still every Thursday thousands are expressing their anger in demonstrations. There is not a single poster in the city mobilising for the demo because it is not necessary - people know it will happen. The organisers of the demo - which includes ArbeiterInnenstandpunkt (ASt), the Austrian section of the LRCI - never formally requested the routes of the demo at the police (a procedure which you have to do normally in Austria). So far the police accepted that we march where we want and 3-4 police cars and some motor bikes wait at the top of the demos - normally led by comrades from the CWI and the ASt - and stop the traffic on streets where we decide to go. However the movement on the streets has lost steam because nearly everyone recognises that with these demonstrations alone we can never topple the government. This is why the ArbeiterInnenstandpunkt argued for an orientation to the working class and for a general strike to overthrow the government and their plans. At the same time, while the movement on the street has lost momentum there are first sign of workers' protests organised by the trade unions. There have been a series of mass workers' rallies inside the enterprises plus shop steward conferences - particularly in the (semi-)nationalised industrial and service sector, which is the main target of the government's privatisation plans. On 5 May the Austrian TUC plans another large shop stewards conference and on 16 May a day of action. The ArbeiterInnenstandpunkt (Workers Standpoint)fought from the beginning of the movement for a policy of militant class struggle. In the second half of March we led together with CWI and the IS sections an occupation of the biggest hall in Vienna University and tried to extend it to a broad strike movement. Despite support for this at mass meeting of 1.200 students the student groups of the Social democracy and the Stalinist parties successfully managed to sabotage it. At the moment the Ast's focus - besides co-organising the Thursday demonstrations - is intervening at various workers meetings and rallying a core of oppositionial rank & file workers against the bureaucratic sell out. The bureaucracy is doing everything it can to stop real mass strike actions. The coming May Day demo which we expect to be more militant and bigger than in the past is an excellent opportunity for the intervention of revolutionaries. More on this in the next issue. >> WORKERS POWER GLOBAL WEBSITE UPDATE The site has been upgraded with a search engine and a new easy to use way of finding what you want. Make http://www.workerspower.com your first stop on the web. >> SEND MONEY TO THE EAST EUROPE FUND Sections of the League for a Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI) in the Czech Republic and Ukraine urgently need money. A little goes a long way - but we need as much as you can send. 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