Thursday was a fantastic day! I attended the launching of a new independent union in Egypt, by the BRAVE public transport workers, whose strikes were central to the overthrow of Mubarak. This was followed by another declaration of another free union, by the Manshiyet el-Bakri Hospital workers.
Many of the workers present in the event also signed to join the Democratic Labor Party. More free unions are coming soon, mark my word. The strategy adopted by the radical left is giving full support for the strike wave, pushing strongly in the direction of forming a unified labor party that represents the political interests of the working class in the ongoing revolution and, in parallel efforts, building a new federation of independent trade unions.
This revolution is hardly finished, and we have to work 25 hours a day to liaise between strike leaders and organizers of social protests across the country. We need to create national coordinating mechanisms. The spontaneity of the current strikes is not enough to achieve victory. We need structures, formed by the workers themselves, that will link the different industrial centers together, and reach out to the civil servants and students. Only then we can talk of overthrowing the military dictatorship.
For the workers intifada! Solidarity statement by Polish Labor Party:
We stress our absolute and unconditional support for working people in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and other Arab countries who undertook the steadfast struggle against the ruling regimes, which so far resulted in abolishing two dictators, subservient to Western capital and imperialism, and shaking the rule of the others.
The Egyptian workers are carrying out today the consecutive strike actions, demanding inter alia the significant rise of the minimal wage, real guarantees of freedom to organize themselves in trade unions and the right to strike, permanent contracts for temporary workers, renationalization of privatized enterprises and stopping the privatization plan, and guaranteed access to health care. There is no doubt that those protests contributed to the resignation of the Prime Minister Ahmad Shafiq, just like analogical protests in Tunisia contributed to the retirement of Prime Minister Mohammed Ghannouchi.
We particularly stress our admiration to the workers of Ghazl el-Mahalla whose struggle in recent years has become the symbol of the steadfast resistance to the people fighting for the workers’ rights in the whole world and who carried on the victorious three-day strike in recent days.
The example of Egypt in which the movement of protest grew up through the whole last decade despite brutal repression, founding its hitherto culmination in the January 25 Revolution, remains important to the whole international movement of struggle for social justice. Militant workers’ actions in Egypt intertwined with the mobilizations against the barbarian occupation of Palestine and the imperialist aggressions which wreaked the havoc in Afghanistan and Iraq – which proves the international importance of that struggles.
Finally, your demands remind us all these causes we are fighting for in Poland. We know well the realities of unemployment, work for temporary contracts, insufficient minimal wage, unbridled repression for trade-unionist activities, dead-end privatization, rising levels of social stratification and the lack of access to basic social services. So your struggle is also our struggle and the solidarity with you is just obvious to us!
“…forming a unified labor party that represents the political interests of the working class in the ongoing revolution and, in parallel efforts, building a new federation of independent trade unions.”
It’s not so much different from what I know thanks to Polish Labor Party (PPP) – though in so much different conditions…
Hope to know more about DLP.
From a Union member in the USA Workers of the world unite all you have to lose is your chains
Solidarity forever