>>> WORKERS POWER GLOBAL WEEK E-newswire of the LRCI 9 June 2000 Subscribe to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.workerspower.com >> WELCOME TO ISSUE #9 Workers Power Global Week is the English language e-newsletter of the LRCI. To unsubscribe mail to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please forward this to a comrade. >> IN THIS ISSUE: ARGENTINE GENERAL STRIKE, ZIMBABWE, BANGLADESH, UKRAINE, PRAGUE PROTEST UPDATE >> HOW CAN WE IMPROVE THIS BULLETIN? WRITE AND TELL US: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> ARGENTINA: GENERAL STRIKE As we hit the =93send=94 button, the biggest general strike for decades is u= nder way in Argentina. Hundreds of thousands of workers have joined today's protest against the higher taxes and spending cuts demanded by the IMF as part of its austerity plan. Hospitals are on emergency only, the transport system is at a standstill, and many factories and shops are shut. Protesters have blocked the roads into Buenos Aires with burning tyres while there are reports of sporadic fighting with police and strike-breaking taxi-drivers. The austerity package is designed to guarantee further bail-out loans from the IMF. President de la Rua has also called for sharp cuts in state workers' wages and pensions. CGT union federation Hugo Moyano threatened further strikes if the austerity plan is not withdrawn. =46or more in Spanish see: http://www.pts.org.ar >> WORKERS POWER GLOBAL WEBSITE UPDATE The June 2000 issue of Workers Power (Britain) is now online at http://www.workerspower.com/wpglobal/wpbritain244.html Articles include: >> SWP INTERNATIONAL IN FACTION STRUGGLE http://www.workerspower.com/wpglobal/ISOvSWP.html >> EURO2000 SOCCER: A QUESTION OF CLASS? http://www.workerspower.com/wpglobal/euro2000.html >> SIERRA LEONE: THE NEW IMPERIALISM http://www.workerspower.com/wpglobal/sierraleonejune2khtml >> BRITAIN: WHERE NEXT FOR THE LSA? http://www.workerspower.com/wpglobal/Isa244.html >> BRITAIN: SCRAP SECTION 28 http://www.workerspower.com/wpglobal/s28June2k.html >> BRITAIN: LABOUR'S RACIST ASYLUM OFFENSIVE http://www.workerspower.com/wpglobal/asylum44.html >> FOCUS - ZIMBABWE: ZANU-PF CONTINUES PRE-ELECTION RAMPAGE Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections planned for 24/25 June will be conducted in a climate of fear and intimidation. It is not white farmers but black members of the opposition movement, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), who have been bearing the brunt of attacks by gangs supporting Mugabe's Zanu-PF ruling party. Zanu-PF supporters threatened candidates as they registered at the start of this month. Candidate Thadeus Rukini was beaten to death. In March, Mugabe was trailing in the opinion polls. Sixty three per cent of voters said they wanted a change of government. Zimbabwe's workers and peasants were disillusioned with a ruling party and leader which presided over 50 per cent unemployment and 60 per cent inflation. The MDC was gathering support on a wide scale. Since then Mugabe has launched a counter attack using both carrot and stick. The stick is political violence and intimidation. MDC rallies are broken up. The MDC has virtually no access to the air waves. The carrot is the promise of land redistribution. First Mugabe unleashed the "war veterans" to lead land occupations. When the white farmers caved in and promised not to support the opposition, the leadership tried to rein in the squatters. At the end of last month the ZANU-PF government finally decreed the land occupations legal, and promised to resettle 100,000 landless peasants by the end of June. This is too little, too late. The country's 4,400 white farmers own the most fertile 34 per cent of Zimbabwe's land while one million black peasant farmers subsist on the remainder. Yet for 20 years, Mugabe only managed to "resettle" a few of his closest friends and ministers. As one popular opposition t-shirt puts it: "Land to the people, not the politicians". =46ar from being the scourge of the capitalist farmers, Mugabe wants to do business with them. That is why he left the white landowners alone to build up their wealth for two decades and even now has allowed them to bank 20 per cent of their income, from the lucrative tobacco trade, in foreign currency accounts Mugabe has only encouraged land occupations now to save his political skin. After the elections he hopes to call off the occupations and strike a deal with the reactionary Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU). Unfortunately, the leadership of the MDC - which was formed by the trade union movement in September 1999 and quickly attracted over a million members from the workers and the rural poor - has bent over backwards to support the white farmers and the Western capitalists. On the land question, the MDC supports the retention of the big plantations in the hands of the landowners, allowing only unutilised and marginal land to be redistributed. Even then, the black peasant farmers will have to mortgage their land to attract investment while the white capitalist farmers will enjoy rich compensation. The MDC leadership want to mortgage Zimbabwe's future to the bankers in the IMF by rescheduling the debt. Over the past few months Zimbabwe has had to sell half its gold reserves and mortgage next year's gold deposits just to keep the country afloat. Doing the IMF's bidding will mean following approved policies such as privatisation, welfare and education cuts and a concentration on production for export. The black workers and poor peasants must not allow Morgan Tsvangirai and the rest of the MDC leadership to throw away their futures and hand the capitalists a lifeline. In the June elections they must give no support either to the thugs of the ZANU-PF nor to the bourgeois candidates of the MDC. Only those MDC candidates chosen by the workers and the rural masses - in the main, socialists and trade unionists - deserve workers' support and votes. Those imposed from above, sadly the majority, will only sell the poor out. At the same time, trade unionists need to organise to ensure that the elections are as fair as possible and that ZANU-PF is not able to postpone elections or launch a coup should they lose. In April, Tsvangirai promised to "bring violence to the doorsteps of the perpetrators", but then quickly backtracked. He shouldn't have: workers need to form their own militia to protect political meetings and demonstrations and the polling booths from intimidation. The MDC national council in May also considered calling a general strike to protest against the violence. The working class needs a general strike, both as a warning against the coup-mongers, and to free up the most politically advanced activists to educate, agitate and organise the masses. =46inally, workers and socialists need to use the election period to challen= ge the MDC leadership and its class-collaborationist road. They should learn from the South African experience. There the trade unions supported a bourgeois-led ANC government and paid for it with privatisation, job cuts, speed-ups and a deteriorating social fabric. Zimbabwe's workers have launched three impressive general strikes in recent years. They have fought vicious price hikes by taking to the streets and battling with the police. They have forced their leaders to build a new party of opposition. In short they have shown courage, tenacity and ingenuity in equal and enormous measures. They will need all of these in the weeks ahead. - For workers' militia to defend political action! - For a general strike to guarantee a free and fair an election and stop Mugabe's reign of terror! -Link up with the South African working class, not the white farmers and the IMF! -Build a revolutionary socialist party, not a popular front! Read this article online and find out more about the class struggle in Zimbabwe: go to http://www.workerspower.com/wpglobal/zim244.html >> BANGLADESH: OPPRESSION AND MISERY IN THE DELTA by LRCI supporters in Bangladesh On 3 May, in Savar, Bangladesh, garment workers and their supporters staged a peaceful protest against a sudden wage cut. The management of Ring Shine called in police, who attacked the 1500 strong gathering. One knitting operator, Rafiqul Islam, and one supporter, Mosharaf, were shot dead and 200 injured. The outraged demonstrators ransacked the factory in revenge. Six people were arrested, and a further 80 face charges of damage to property. This incident is one example of the volatile situation within the fortress-like compound of Savar`s Export Processing Zones (EPZ) which contains 33,700 workers. Bangladesh began creating these EPZs in 1978 in order to attract foreign capital and earn export dollars. In 1993 the Bangladesh Export Processing Zone Authority (BEPZA) was set up and a blanket ban on trade union activity was imposed. This is obviously the most attractive feature for investors, on top of tax breaks and other incentives. In 1997, 15,000 Savar workers went on strike in defiance of the ban, demanding trade union rights and job security. The EPZs, now employ 70,000 workers, mostly in the garment and shoe-making industries. While national labour laws do not apply in the EPZs, BEPZA has control over work conditions, wages and benefits. However, the guaranteed minimum monthly wages of $US 70, 40 and 25 for skilled, unskilled and probationary workers respectively is a laughable fiction. So too is the entitlement of permanent workers to annual festival bonuses, medical coverage, and accommodation and transportation allowances. This body has consistently refused to give out letters of employment and does not hire any workers on a permanent basis. In reality earnings come to about $20 per month, less than half the official rates and workers do forced overtime on threat of dismissal. The withholding of pay for up to months at a time, a practice common throughout the private sector, is also the norm. The situation in the garment industry at large is even worse. The country's top export earner employs 1.5 million workers under conditions of extreme super-exploitation. The majority are young women from rural areas who have migrated to the urban centres in search of work. Working in sweatshops which are more like prisons than factories, with no fixed hours, no regular breaks or days off, workers earn between $7 and 10 a month, for an average of 13 hours a day, 27 days per month. This comes to an hourly rate of two or three cents. The industry currently owes $300,000 in back pay, a staggering amount considering the miserly wages. Where unions are involved, they act more like extortionists, taking money from management to keep the workers in line while collecting dues from members with whom they have virtually no contact. A week after the Savar incident the Bangladesh Garments Workers Unity Council (BGWUC), comprising eight such unions, secured an agreement. Under this Ring Shine agreed to foot the medical expenses of all injured workers, drop the charges filed against the demonstrators, pay back wages and follow the BEPZA rules regarding minimum wages, festival bonuses and maternity benefit, as well as compensation of about $4,000 to the families of the two men killed by police. As part of the agreement the BGWUC, however revealed its true colours. It undertakes the responsibility to ensure the peaceful operation of the factory and to ensure that the workers will not create any further problems in future in the factory. The EPZs are nothing more than a vehicle for the transfer of public money into private hands in the form of bargain- priced land and energy, tax breaks and subsidies. The government must be forced to open its books to inspection by democratically chosen representatives of the workers of these zones. Only thus will the full extent of their exploitation and the plunder of the country by the multinationals be exposed. >> UKRAINE: YOUNG WORKERS PICK UP THE PIECES OF STALINISM by Michael Gatter Young workers in the Ukraine are organising against the appalling wages and living standards inflicted by the Kuchma government. We interviewed Sergei =46ilchaskin of the Progressive Youth Trade Union. =46ilchaskin says: "Incomes here are miserable. Let me give you an example: = a student here gets 17 Hrywna a month (approximately =A32.40). A loaf of bread costs H2 and a monthly bus pass is H9. We have calculated that you need about H75 a month just to survive, and that's without power and heating. You don't have to be a mathematician to see that no student could live on that. So, most students have to work alongside their studies - many young women work as prostitutes. Wages are often not paid either - just at the moment, 40,000 miners are on strike for six months of unpaid wages. The most important demands for us, therefore, are higher wages and grants, payment of back pay and the creation of more jobs." To read the full interview and find out about how Ukrainian workers are striking back against austerity, go to http://www.workerspower.com/wpglobal/ukrainejune2k.html >> SEPTEMBER 26: THE POLITICAL ISSUES ON THE ROAD TO PRAGUE - PROTEST WEBSITE RELAUNCHED The request for talks with anti-capitalist protesters prior to the week of action against the IMF in Prague 20-28 September has caused debates within the movement. To talk or not to talk - and what are our demands? In Britain the lecturers=92 union NATFHE passed a resolution in support of t= he protest at its annual conference. Key dates: Sat 23 September: Mass workers=92 demo called by Czech unions and CP. Tues 26 September: Global Day of Action called by INPEG/NGOs. LRCI supports both protests but believes it is vital to bring Czech workers onto the streets. Meanwhile the struggle for unity in action on the ground has stirred renewed debate between Trotskyists and Anarchists. All of these issues are now addressed on a dedicated "protest portal" - click on this link to see the relaunched DESTROYIMF website: http://www.destroyimf.org =46or an in-depth look at the politics of the Seattle movement read: http://www.workerspower.com/wpglobal/seattle244.html The debate between the Czech section of the LRCI and the Anarchist FSA is covered on: http://www.workerspower.com/wpglobal/ISOPvFSA.html >> 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. Send UK cheques or International Money Orders to Workers Power, BCM Box 7750, London, WC1N 3XX, UK. >> BECOME A CORRESPONDENT FOR WPGW The LRCI has members across the globe - but there are many countries where we have no correspondents. Send us your news and views: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> NOW FORWARD THIS TO A COMRADE >> NOW FORWARD THIS TO A COMRADE -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
