Europe
International Worker / Issue 07 Tuesday 21 Aug 2007
GREECEThe Revolutionary Left and the Elections
F ollowing a year of unprecedented mass mobilizations against the attempts by the New Democracy right wing government to introduce privatization of higher education by a special law and by constitutional changes, the ruling party and the entire bourgeois political system faces an enormous crisis of legitimacy. This crisis was exacerbated by a series of major financial scandals affecting directly State and government officials. Political tensions are rapidl… Read more
International Worker / Issue 06 Tuesday 4 Apr 2006
Workers’ struggles in GreecePiraeus, the biggest as well as other ports of the country, became a battlefield between riot police and workers on February 22, as seamen were in a 10 days strike against the lowering of their income and the right wing Karamanlis government had declared the martial law to break the strike. The decision by the government to move against the strikers by declaring a “State of ” was met by a powerful resistance not only by the seamen and their unions bu… Read more
International Worker / Issue 06 Tuesday 4 Apr 2006
Presidential Elections in FinlandWith a very small difference of votes, the Social Democrat, Tarja Halonen, won the presidential election in Finland in the second round and defeated the candidate of the rightist party of bourgeoisie. This is the second six years period in which people are voting for Halonen. All together after the period there’s going to be a 30 continual years of social democrat dynasty in the presidency. Anyway, there was not any difference between the two cand… Read more
International Worker / Issue 05 Sunday 22 Jan 2006
Spain: Layoffs at SeatO n December 23 pink slips began arriving at the homes of the workers of Seat, a subsidiary of Volkswagen in Spain. Comisiones Obreras (CC.OO.) and the UGT —the majority unions— tried to show as a success the reduction to 660 from the 1,400 layoffs initially proposed by the company. But the truth is that almost half of the workers are on the street and the agreement as a whole is a model of labor flexibilization: reductions in layoff compensatio… Read more
International Worker / Issue 05 Sunday 22 Jan 2006
Italy: metal workers conflictTHE BOSSES WANT FLEXIBILIZATION; THE BUREAUCRACY, CONCILIATION
T hat the triple Italian trade union bureaucracy (CGIL-CISL-UIL) has always acceded to the requests of the bosses regarding the introduction of more casual and flexibilized labor, and the dismantling of collective bargaining agreements, is no secret. But always, before capitulating, as a question of “responsibility”, the unions had to mount a “circus” of struggle to justify themselves before the rank and filers, before setting things u… Read more
International Worker / Issue 05 Sunday 22 Jan 2006
Solidarity with Turkish workers in struggleBankruptcies in Italy <!-- @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } --> Dear comrades of the Partido Obrero, I inform you briefly on the impact of the message of solidarity from the Argentine trade unionists. I was in Corlu last Tuesday and I spoke in a hall completely filled with workers of the leather industry (and some from other industries). Things were going well, but the most dramatic moment came at… Read more
International Worker / Issue 05 Sunday 22 Jan 2006
London Undergound StrikeTHE SUBWAY IS LIKE THAT
Just days after the Subway workers paralyzed New York, the British transit workers union (RTM), which represents all transit workers, made a 24-hour strike on the London Underground. The strike —from 12 midnight December 31 to 12 midnight January 1— had a strong impact because it is a tradition that every New Year's the Underground trains run all night long, in order to facilitate the movement of passengers during the festivities of New Year's. … Read more
International Worker / Issue 05 Sunday 22 Jan 2006
The Bankruptcies in ItalyT he economic crisis that has shaken Italy in the last few years has hit big capital and, above all, the banks. The long struggle between the European Central Bank and the Bank of Italy has had a provisional outcome in favor of the first: the ECB has achieved a reform that eliminates the interference of the Italian private banks in the Bank of Italy, and opens the road for European banks to participate in the festival of acquisitions and concentrations that … Read more
International Worker / Issue 04 Friday 16 Dec 2005
Party of the European LeftLEFT FLANK OF THE BOURGEOISIE
F rom last October 29-30, in Athens, was held the first congress of the “Party of the European Left” (PIE). This international federation of parties had been formed in May of 2004 in Rome. The driving force behind the initiative was the Party of Communist Refoundation, the Italian organization whose secretary, Fausto Bertinotti, is the president of the new Party of the European Left. Around him have grouped a series of forces coming, essenti… Read more
International Worker / Issue 04 Friday 16 Dec 2005
TURKEYThe struggle at the Ileri Deri tannery
For eight months, the workers at the Ileri Deri tannery have been carrying out a very hard struggle to gain the right to unionization. This is a small plant, located in the town of Corlu, in Thrace, a region which has recently become a zone of strong industrialization, with numerous small, medium and large businesses, especially those linked to the leather industry. Union membership is extremely low: it is habitual for the bosses to dismiss worke… Read more
International Worker / Issue 04 Friday 16 Dec 2005
Conference of revolutionaries in the BalkansW ith a successful and enthusiastic public meeting in the open air Strefi Hill Theater, in the center of Athens , Greece , on September 19, 2005 the 5 th International Conference of the Balkan Socialist Centre ‘Christian Rakovsky’ has concluded its fruitful work. The Rakovsky Centre was founded in January 2000, in the aftermath of the NATO war against Yugoslavia . The initiative was taken by the forces fighting for the Refoundation of the … Read more
International Worker / Issue 04 Friday 16 Dec 2005
"No" to European UnityT he victory of the “No” vote in the French referendum on the so-called European Constitution has had profound consequences on the political scenario of the old continent. First of all, the results of the referendum have registered and amplified, in its turn, the enormous crisis of consensus accumulated by the policies dominant in Europe over the last fifteen years. The profound difficulties experienced by the various imperialist governments i… Read more
International Worker / Issue 04 Friday 16 Dec 2005
ITALYThe left backs the liberal alternative
The entire Italian situation can be summarized in this overall picture: the more the Berlusconi government enters in decline, the more the liberal changeover of the Union advances, advanced by the strong powers of the bourgeoisie. The more the liberal changeover advances, the more it reveals its anti-working class and anti-popular program. The more its face is revealed, the more this changeover needs cover from the left. The crisis of pro-Berlusc… Read more
International Worker / Issue 04 Friday 16 Dec 2005
THE REBELLION OF THE FRENCH YOUTHDEFEND THE UPRISING OF THE YOUTH OF FRANCE - DOWN WITH THE ‘CHIRACAILLE’ - FOR THE SOCIALIST UNION OF EUROPE
DECLARATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT OF THE CRFI
F or two weeks, a huge revolt of the most neglected, humiliated and downtrodden youth of the neighborhoods and ghettos ringing the big cities has shaken France and has profoundly moved Europe and the whole world. The death by electrocution of two youth trying to escape police control was the detonator which exploded the accumulated social resentment of a new generation with no social future under the real conditions of capitalism. T he explosion does not take place in in a suburb of Africa or Latin America, but in the heart of French imperialism and the European Union. After the exhibition of poverty, inequality and misery which took place in New Orleans, the revolt of the youth of France lays bare the social reality of the so-called first world and the content of the social plundering of the so-called globalization. The French imperialist State and its cronies, who saw as minor incid… Read more
International Worker / Issue 03 Tuesday 2 Aug 2005
The European crisisIN THE WAKE OF THE FRENCH REFERENDUM
T ony Blair and his French colleague, Jacques Chirac, almost came to blows, like vulgar thugs, during the last meeting of the European Union in Brussels . They were discussing, according to the press, the chronic budget deficit of the European Union, and British contributions. London does not want to contribute a penny more because the United Kingdom does not finance its farmers while the Paris-Berlin axe does. With this, says Blair, they hurt all the r… Read more
International Worker / Issue 03 Tuesday 2 Aug 2005
Finland is no paradiseFINNISH CAPITALISM: MYTHS AND REALITY
Many articles have appeared recently in the international press, and also from bourgeois governments, on the Finnish model. If someone reads Le Monde it is not difficult to realize that the Swedish model is more popular in France than in Finland. In Greece in order to privatise university education, they promote the Finnish model of testing for eligibility for scholarships in institutions of higher learning. In reality they use figures and systems not v… Read more
International Worker / Issue 03 Tuesday 2 Aug 2005
COMMUNIST REFOUNDATION 6th NATIONAL CONGRESSFROM COMMUNIST REFOUNDATION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC REFOUNDATION
T he national congress of the Communist Refoundation Party (Partido della Rifondazione Comunista - PRC), which was celebrated in Venice March 3 through 6, has fully confirmed the pro-government stance of Fausto Bertinotti. This stance entails two main aspects. First of all, a political project which makes the alliance with the liberals and a capacity for “conditioning” [the majority] in the framework of their primary elections its ce… Read more