WFTU General Secretary Opening Speech at the 20th FISE Congress

Speech by Pambis Kyritsis General Secretary of WFTU at the 20^th FISE Congress Rabat, 4,5 April 2025

Comrades,

Before I begin my speech, I would like to warmly thank the FNE for hosting the 20^th Congress of FISE.

The conditions created by our Moroccan comrades guarantee that this Congress will be successful and worthy of all our expectations.

FISE is a valuable pillar for the WFTU. It expresses the struggles and demands of a group of workers whose object is education, learning, culture, and ultimately the consciousness formation of the new generations of every society.

It is one of the longest-operating TUI of the WFTU, founded just one year after the establishment of the WFTU, and its history is rich in struggles and creative contributions to the achievements related to education as well as the intellectual and cultural development.

It is true that in recent years, FISE has not been as mobilized and active as we would have wished.  Organizational, financial, and other problems have limited its activity and presence.

That is why I am confident that our conference here in Rabat will be a new dynamic start.  The discussion that will take place here, the exchange of experiences, the decisions that will be taken, will constitute a guideline for action that will lead us to the new struggles that await us, and the fresh and renewed leading bodies that we will elect will, I am sure, undertake the burden and the noble responsibility of organizational reorganization and a more active and productive operation of this historic International.

Dear colleagues, brothers and sisters,

Our era is characterized by the generalization and deepening of the capitalist crisis, which is accompanied by new attacks on workers’ rights and achievements, a dramatic widening of social inequalities, further environmental degradation, and reckless overexploitation of our planet’s natural resources.

The genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and in the West Bank, with the support and encouragement of the USA, the EU, and their allies, has once again revealed in all its grandeur the hypocrisy, cynicism, and inhumane nature of imperialism.

Global geopolitical and economic rivalries continue to directly threaten world peace and security, even with the risk of nuclear destruction. Imperialist wars, interventions, sanctions, and blockades continue and intensify.

The USA, the EU, and their NATO allies are announcing new massive increases in military spending, which, apart from being a threat to global peace and security, also mean even harsher austerity policies and widening social inequality.

Nowadays, the shift towards a war economy is clearly a priority for the ruling circles of capitalism, as it ensures profitability for multinational monopolies and the expansion of the geopolitical power of developed imperialist states.

Harsh and intense attacks continue against the labor and social achievements and the democratic and trade union freedoms.

The high cost of living and inflation are brutally undermining workers’ and pensioners’ living standards.

Unemployment, precariousness, and the overexploitation of cheap labor of vulnerable workers due to mass economic migration or refugee flows, as well as anti-popular and anti-labor legislative measures systematically promoted by neoliberal governments, have significantly undermined labor with rights and regulated collective agreements that reflect the modern needs of workers.

Individual contracts, privatizations, outsourcing, teleworking, and “service leasing” are just some of the forms taken by this harsh neoliberal attack. The authoritarian and arbitrary increase in retirement ages continues methodically.

Major social achievements such as public education, social security and public health are being privatized.

Thousands of workers are killed or injured daily due to the lack of measures to protect against workplace accidents and occupational diseases.

Safety and health at work are seen by employers as undesirable costs that reduce their profits.

This attack is, of course, also faced by the workers in the education sector that all of you delegates at this conference represent.

It is obvious that for the dominant circles of global capitalism, education is not a public good to which everyone is entitled rightfully and equally, but is still a commodity that must be profitable.

Hence, education is continuously privatised, state expenditures are constantly shrinking, and responsibility for public education is shifting onto the parents themselves and, consequently, onto the popular strata.

The attack against universal, free, and quality education has not only economic incentives.  The education sector shapes the consciences of the new generation and the bourgeoise aims in the creation of a new shift of the working class which will not be overall educated but fragmentary and superficially trained as tool in the market need, a new shift of the working class that will be taught a falsified and distorted history and will be socially indifferent and ideologically conservative.  Consequently, FISE and the progressive teachers also have a crucial task to defend the scientific, quality, progressive, and human-centered education.

The attack on the rights and achievements of teachers continues, as their work is increasingly becoming precarious and temporary, without security and without employment contracts, with humiliating wages and with all the consequences for the quality of the education they provide.

The encouraging and hopeful element in the depressing picture of today’s world, is the fact that workers do not passively accept the neoliberal capitalist, anti-popular, and anti-labor offensive. Millions of workers around the world are choosing the path of struggle to defend their trade union, social, and political rights.

With militant mobilizations in every corner of the globe, they are demanding work with rights that ensures the satisfaction of their contemporary needs.

The WFTU members or friends are always on the frontlines of these struggles.

The response of bourgeois governments to the just popular demands is the sharpening of state repression and authoritarianism, and such attacks and persecutions are particularly intensified against the struggling teachers.

At the same time, employers and governments are attempting to manipulate labor struggles, betting on the role of yellow unions and compromised trade union leaders.

It is no coincidence that the ITUC have intensified its attacks, aiming to limit the presence and influence of the WFTU within the global trade union movement, either by exerting blackmail and undue pressure or by distributing promises and luring with buy-offs.

The more they feel the increasing questioning by workers of the path of class collaboration and trade union tradition that they serve, the more their attacks will intensify.

That is why a particularly important goal for us, in today’s conditions, is to ensure the greatest possible expansion of the presence and influence of the WFTU in all sectors and all regions of the world.

We do not underestimate the means at their disposal.

But we also have weapons. Strategically much more powerful than theirs. We have our ideology and our class orientation, our history and our action, our militant spirit, and our moral advantage.

But to utilize these weapons, we need good organization, enlightenment, and ideological and political education.

Dear colleagues, brothers and sisters,

2025 is the year we will celebrate 80 years since the founding of WFTU.

Born from the ashes of the most destructive war in the history of humanity, the WFTU completes 80 years of continuous and uninterrupted struggle for the rights of workers, for justice and social progress, against all forms of discrimination, against wars and imperialist interventions, against may by man exploitation.

80 years of solidarity and internationalism.

These celebrations should be used as a motivation and impetus to highlight the history of the struggles and actions of the WFTU and to emphasize its difference from the organizations of compromised trade unionists and yellow unions that promote class collaboration and integration into the system of exploitation.

The Presidential Council of the WFTU already approved a declaration and a rich program of activities in honor of the 80th anniversary.

A program that includes seminars, local and regional events, publications, podcasts and video clips, photography and poster competitions, events all over the world by our members, and of course the central commemorative event, which is going to be organized on October 3 in Paris, the city where the historic founding Congress took place.

Comrades, fellow comrades,

It is obvious that in our era, the prerequisites for truly dignified working and social living conditions for all workers exist in abundance. The rapid development of science and technology has led to a leap in the productive capabilities of human labor. What we are fighting for these capabilities not to be utilized to increase the profits of capitalists and create unimaginable wealth for a few, but to ensure dignified living and working conditions for those who, through their labor and toil, are the true creators of the produced wealth.

Organization and struggle are the only path that can overturn the existing realities of misery, exploitation, and social injustice.

The weapon of workers everywhere is solidarity and internationalism.  The WFTU remains firmly committed to these principles.  It continues its 80-year path with the same vision that inspired its founding: for a world without wars and imperialist interventions, without exploitation and discrimination.  A world where work will be permanent, stable, regulated, and safe.

Long live the unity and struggles of the Working Class.

Long live FISE and the WFTU.