The WFTU participated at the congress of the CGT des Bouches du Rhône à Martigues in France, represented by comrade Cinzia della Porta, member of the WFTU Secretariat from USB Italy. Comrade Cinzia took the floor of the congress and addressed the 600 delegates, trade unionists on October 20th, 2022.
Read the whole intervention:
Dear comrades, brothers and sisters
It is a great and distinguished honor, to have today the opportunity to convey the warm, militant class greetings of the more than 105 million members of the World Trade Union Federation from 130 countries from all corners of the world, to the delegates of the 58 Congress of the UD-13, and through you, to the militant working class of France.
WFTU expresses its support for the strikers in the French refineries and the FNIC CGT, affiliated to the WFTU, which has been leading this heroic struggle against the big monopolies Total and Exxon Mobile for three weeks.
The workers of the French refineries are conducting a powerful and exemplary struggle, at a time when these big oil monopolies are paying billions of euros in dividends to their shareholders and refusing to increase wages: the refiners are showing that only the path of strike and struggle can force the bosses to meet the workers’ demands.
The WFTU condemns the French government’s brutal decision to carry out police requisitions of striking workers to break the strike!
We recall that the requisitioning of striking workers in this sector by the French government in 2010 was condemned by the International Labour Organisation, following an appeal by the FNIC CGT.
The phase today is of extreme intensification of political, economic, and military antagonisms, aiming at controlling and exploiting the economic resources of our planet. The peoples pay the price of the imperialist wars and interventions with death, refugees, and also with the deterioration of their living and working conditions.
The economic crisis and inter-imperialist competition are opening up more and more dramatic scenarios. An economic crisis that is the crisis of the capitalist model, which no longer finds margins for valorisation. It is the MPC (capitalist mode of production) that has reached its limit: the conditions for a growth adequate to the size of world capital and its need for valorisation are no more existent, unless we go towards a generalised war, with the threat of a nuclear breakout.
The only margins for growth come from an increasingly intensive exploitation of the workforce and the planet’s shrinking natural resources, but also from the clash and competition between the great historical financial-economic-state blocs (the Western imperialist countries) and the Euro-Asian powers that are objectively antagonistic to the old Western bloc.
In this case, the aim is to take market shares, territories and labour by military force. The value chains, which have lengthened in recent years on an international level, are being redefined, redrawing the forms and perimeters of exploitation. A new scenario is emerging, which requires us to make an analytical effort to adapt our trade union organisations to the challenges imposed by the new era of competition between economic blocs that are being profoundly recomposed.
To the hawks try to appear as pigeons, we tell that the world peace is not being protected by even more militarism, or patronage of all kinds of far-right nationalists and fascists. It cannot be based on blockades, sanctions and economic wars.
Once again, the WFTU is raising its voice, the voice of the working class for peace, for an end to imperialist interventions, for the dissolution of NATO and all military coalitions, and for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
The economic crises of capitalism follow one another. The pandemic has not only dramatically widened social inequalities but has also been used for new attacks against democratic rights and trade union freedoms.
Our 18 congress in may was an important step to discuss.
abbiamo stabilito la giornata del 1 settembre contro la guerra.
October 3rd, the WFTU founding day, has been establish by our Federation as an international Action Day.
This year, under the general slogan:
- We will not pay for the capitalist crisis and the imperialist wars.
- Wage and pension increase Now.
We call on workers in all countries, together to strengthen and massify the unions. To resist and mobilize. The struggles taking place in several countries are our hope and our future. Solidarity is our weapon. Today’s dominant issue on the agenda of trade unions is the dramatic deterioration of workers’ living standards.
The sharp and uncontrollable increase in prices of all basic necessities, essentially dissipates the wages and purchasing power of workers, which not only are not increased, but in many cases, have been reduced under the pretext of the crisis and the pandemic.
It is clear that only through the struggles, the goals of the labor movement are realized and social progress achieved. Struggles for the satisfaction of the contemporary needs of the workers at all levels: salary, employment, security, culture, and mental. To defend the democratic and trade union freedoms, collective bargaining and stable, permanent, and agreements-regulated labor; to protect the autonomy of the Trade Unions and their class orientation, away from bureaucracy, corruption, and manipulation by the capital and employers. Against the action of the yellow unions that undermine the unity of workers and the strength and the effectiveness of the labor struggles.
Dear comrades,
We know that UC 13 stands on the front line of the ongoing struggles not only for the protection and the improvement of the rights and the working conditions of France, but also to defend the social achievements and the democratic and trade union freedoms of the working class.
We, at the WFTU, consider you as a strong, militant, internationalist and class-oriented force.
I wish every success to your congress and I assure you that in the face of WFTU you will always have a militant and selfless companion on which you can always rely.
- Long live the working class solidarity
- Long live the working class unity to the social liberation and to eliminate man by man exploitation
