Speech by Pambis Kyritsis
General Secretary of WFTU
Presidential Council
Hanoi, March 2025
Comrades,
Before I begin my speech, I would first like to warmly thank the VGCL for hosting this very important meeting of the WFTU Presidential Council here in Hanoi today. It is a great honor for all of us that today’s meeting is hosted by the trade union organization of a country whose people have become a global symbol of dedication to the struggle for national independence and social liberation. With incredible courage and self-sacrifice, they managed to crush foreign imperialist intervention and achieve a victory that was not only strategic but also ideological, political, and, above all, moral.
The contribution of VGCL to the preservation and development of the WFTU during difficult times has been immense, and I would like to once again express our gratitude on behalf of everyone for this.
The excellent conditions created by our Vietnamese comrades guarantee that this meeting will be successful and worthy of all our expectations.
Our era is characterized by the generalization and deepening of the capitalist crisis, accompanied by new attacks on the rights and achievements of workers, 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 now 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.
The source of instability, violence, and turmoil in Palestine and the broader Middle East is none other than the Israeli occupation, colonization, and usurpation of the rights of the Palestinian people, which has continued for decades.
We are proud because, under the banner of the WFTU, millions of workers in dozens of countries around the world have mobilized in solidarity with the Palestinian people, demanding justice and freedom for Palestine, and condemning not only the barbaric Israeli aggression but also the complicity and encouragement of this aggression by the ruling circles 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 shift towards a war economy is clearly a priority for the ruling circles of capitalism today, as it ensures profitability for multinational monopolies and the expansion of the geopolitical power of developed imperialist states.
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.
That is why the struggle for peace, for us, means first and foremost a struggle for the dismantling of NATO and all military coalitions, a struggle to defend the right of every people to choose the path of their economic and social development without interventions, sanctions, blockades, and economic wars.
Harsh and intense attacks continue against the labor and social achievements of workers and their democratic and trade union freedoms.
The high cost of living and inflation are brutally undermining workers’ and pensioners’ living standards.
Temporary, precarious, and unsecured employment, despite slogans and declarations, is expanding and becoming entrenched.
Unemployment, precariousness, and the overexploitation of cheap labor from 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.
Major social achievements such as social security and public health are being privatized, while the authoritarian and arbitrary increase in retirement ages continues methodically.
Thousands of people continue to be buried daily under the ground in mines operating under medieval conditions, trains continue to collide head-on because they operate with outdated control systems, factories burn with workers trapped inside, and workers are killed or injured daily due to exhaustion and the inability to concentrate caused by the continuous intensification of work and the lack of measures to protect against workplace accidents and occupational diseases.
At the altar of profit and despite the achievements of technology and science, human sacrifices continue as safety and health at work are seen by employers as undesirable costs that reduce their profits.
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. Guided by class-oriented trade unions, 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 modern needs.
The class-oriented trade unions, which are usually members or friends of the WFTU, have led and supported large mass and militant struggles that have made us all proud.
In France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Cyprus, Turkey, the Spanish state, in Argentina, Brazil, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia and in so many other parts of the world, the flag of the WFTU has flown very high, and thanks to these struggles, it has gained even greater prestige and respect.
As the resistance of workers strengthens and the struggles become more massive and militant, so do the phenomena of authoritarianism and repression, and the police persecution of trade union leaders, as well as the attack on trade union freedoms, particularly the right to strike, intensify.
The response of bourgeois governments to the just popular demands is the sharpening of state repression and authoritarianism. 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 globally and the ETUC in Europe have intensified their 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 regions of the world.
We do not underestimate the means at their disposal, nor the help they receive from the mechanisms available to the ruling circles of global capitalism.
But we also have weapons. Weapons that is 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 make use of these weapons, we need good organization, enlightenment, and ideological and political education.
Today and tomorrow, here in Hanoi, the Presidential Council in this regular session will evaluate the action and presence of our Federation during the past year and formulate an Action Plan for 2025.
I sincerely believe that we have responded satisfactorily to the implementation of an ambitious plan and have developed a wealth of activity at all levels, centrally, regionally, and locally.
The detailed report of action for 2024 is in your hands, and you can evaluate it. Therefore, I will not go into much detail.
But allow me to make some brief remarks, which I consider important for a discussion that will focus on our action in all its forms, as a means of credibly communicating the principles and values that the WFTU stands for, and expanding its prestige and influence in the international trade union movement.
Apart from the solidarity and support mobilizations for the heroic people of Palestine that dominated our action in 2024, once again we carried out the annual international campaigns on the occasion of October 3, the founding day of the WFTU, and September 1, which we have established as the World Day of Trade Union Action for Peace. We have established July 26 as the World Day of Mobilization in Defense of Heroic Socialist Cuba and have mobilized our forces in many other cases for solidarity actions with struggles that have developed in many parts of the world.
We have a presence and intervention in international organizations; we participated with female cadres in the UN meeting on women’s rights in New York in March, and we had interventions at the FAO and UNESCO. However, we placed particular importance on our intervention at the ILO, where we had a fairly successful presence during the ILC in June. In addition to the speech of the General Secretary at the plenary session of the Conference, we held a global conference in Geneva on democratic and trade union freedoms. We firmly demanded the democratization of the way the ILO operates and denounced the unacceptable anti-democratic and unethical monopoly of labor representation by the ITUC. Even as observers, we actively participate in the discussions of the Governing Body, particularly on the hot issue of the right to strike, which, as is well known, employers’ organizations, supported by many governments, provocatively challenge.
We worked to further strengthen the relations of the WFTU with our traditional regional allies, such as ICATU in the Arab world and OATTU in Africa.
A particularly important event that we achieved after considerable effort is the high-level visit of a WFTU delegation to China at the invitation of the ACFTU.
There, high-level meetings were held with the President and the General Secretary of the ACFTU, where the will for cooperation and joint action was reaffirmed, as well as the intention for this cooperation to take specific and practical forms.
A closer and more stable cooperation between the WFTU and the ACFTU, based on principles and common goals and values, will certainly be a significant and mutually beneficial development that will strengthen in many ways the action of the class-oriented trade union movement.
We also successfully held the 4th World Congress of Working Youth in November in Marseille, France, as well as two regional conferences, one in Francophone Africa in August and recently in Paris, the European Conference of EUROF, which was a great success.
The TUI Metal, Miners, and Metallurgy held its 4th World Congress in Buenos Aires in May. The TUI Pensioners and Retirees held its 3rd Congress in April in Athens.
World Congresses are planned for 2025 by FISE for next April in Morocco. The TUI Textiles and UITTB will soon announce dates.
Comrades,
The Action Plan for 2025 must allow us to further expand our role and intervention among workers and their unions, on the path of class struggles in defense of their very own genuine class interests. It should be a program of actions and initiatives leading to the organizational strengthening and the even more collective and effective functioning of all the regional, sectoral, local, and thematic structures that constitute the great edifice of the WFTU.
2025 is the year we will celebrate 80 years since the founding of our Federation.
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.
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.
Tomorrow, the Presidential Council of the WFTU will be called upon to approve our 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 we aspire to organize on October 3 in Paris, the city where the historic founding Congress took place.
We will need funding for these activities. Particularly for the main event, which needs to be ambitious.
For this reason, I propose that we set up a special fund for this purpose. The goal should be to collect €50,000.
10% of the 2025 annual fees are to be allocated to this fund. The rest is to be collected with extraordinary contributions from our members and friends. So be prepared for that!
In addition to the activities that the WFTU will carry out centrally or regionally and are included in the program that we will approve, we call on our affiliates to organize, in consultation with each other, at least one event in each country. The WFTU Headquarters will support these events with materials, speakers, or other assistance requested.
I am sure that all of us understand that the financial operation of the WFTU is a key issue to which we must, of course, pay special attention. It is obvious, comrades, that we need more resources to meet the demands that life puts before us.
The report of the Financial Control Committee is, I think, quite enlightening and touches on the issues we need to pay attention to. I support its conclusions, and we will work to implement them.
Comrades, fellow comrades,
It is evident 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. The question is, how are these capabilities being utilized?
To increase the profits of capitalists and create unimaginable wealth for a few, or to ensure dignified living and working conditions for those who, through their labor and toil, are the true creators of the produced wealth.
The natural discontent and anger stemming from the deterioration of living and working conditions experienced by many, as well as from the decay and corruption that capitalism, especially in its harsh anti-popular neoliberal form, drives societies into, create conditions that are exploited by far-right and neo-fascist forces. These forces invest in the anger, despair, and deception of the popular masses.
The class-oriented Trade Union movement will continue to fight so that the justified disappointment, despair, and anger of workers are not transformed into fatalism and social marginalization, not into racism and social obscurantism, but into organization and action.
Organization and struggle are the only path that can overturn the existing realities of misery, exploitation, and social injustice.
We struggle under very difficult and often harsh conditions. Against enemies who possess unbelievable means and who do not hesitate to employ a fifth column within the trade union ranks. However, we remain optimistic.
We have faith in the judgment and orientation of the working class. When the working class realizes its position and role in the progress of society, when through daily small and large struggles it becomes aware of its strength and understands its historical mission, it becomes an invincible force.
With our united and organized struggles, the system that generates crisis and reproduces exploitation can be defeated. A world free of wars and imperialist interventions, free of exploitation and discrimination; a world where work will be permanent and stable, regulated and safe, is achievable.
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