The Meeting of the Directive Committee of the Trade Union International Public Services, takes place in Mexico.
On Saturday, March 16, the WFTU General Secretary, Pambis Kyritsis, addressed the meeting with an online intervention:
Dear Comrades,
First of all, allow me to transfer to all of you, on behalf of the WFTU leadership, militant greeting and to congratulate you for your successful congress that you had in Bojota Colombia few weeks ago.
In this period the nature of imperialism is once again revealed in all its hypocrisy, cynicism, and inhumanity. The massacre and genocide of the Palestinians of Gaza continue unabated and this heinous crime is being shamefully attempted to be presented as Israel’s right of self-defense.
Right of self-defense of whom? A state that for decades has illegally occupied Palestinian and other Arab territories by the force of arms, that has uprooted and displaced millions of people out of their homes and land, that denies the Palestinians the right to have their own independent state and continues the settlements, murders, and arrests, establishing in practice an Apartheid regime.
We are proud because the WFTU from the very first moment, stood by the Palestinian people and highlighted the real cause of instability, violence, and unrest in Palestine and the wider Middle East, which is none other than the Israeli occupation and settlements, the usurpation of the rights of the Palestinian people that has been going on for decades.
We are proud that millions of workers in tens of countries around the world are mobilizing, with the WFTU flags, in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
I regret to say that within the International Trade Union Movement, not everyone can feel proud. Unfortunately, some have lost their voice and remain silent in the face of this crime. They insist on an equal distance stance and they are lost in their ‘yes, but’ positions, equating the perpetrators with the victims.
We demand justice and freedom for Palestine, immediate ceasefire, and the creation of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
We demand an end to NATO’s war with Russia in Ukraine, which they maintain by all means, and to replace weapons with diplomacy.
The struggle for peace is inherent and integrated with the broader struggles of the labor movement for a better world, but this struggle for us has a specific content. It 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. Against the double-standards policy where international law ends up being in practice the law of the strong.
The high cost of living and inflation are brutally undermining workers’ and pensioners’ living standards. The right to organize and collective bargaining are under attack.
The high cost of living and inflation are brutally undermining workers’ and pensioners living standards. The right to organize and collective bargaining are under attack.
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 care are being privatized, while the authoritarian and arbitrary increase of the retirement age continues methodically.
The workers do not passively accept the neoliberal capitalist, anti-grassroots, and anti-worker attacks.
With militant mobilizations in all corners of the globe, they demand the satisfaction of their contemporary needs. Social security, health and safety conditions at work, free and universal public education, dignified life for pensioners and the elderly, and possibilities of creative and quality leisure.
The sharpening of state repression and authoritarianism is the response of the bourgeois governments to the just popular demands; unfortunately, very often under the cooperation or tolerance of surrendered trade union leaders along with yellow unions.
Dear Comrades
In 2023 we had implemented a ambitious action plan after a fairly long period of mandatory restrictions on our activities due to the COVID pandemic.
Our ambition is of course for the 2024 action to be even rich and more multilayered and to develop dynamically and in a balanced way on all the axes of WFTU’s action.
The coordination and guidance of the struggles, the expression of solidarity and internationalism, the dissemination of information, the intervention in international organizations and especially in the ILO, the continuous upgrading of the educational work within the workers and of course the organizational development and the expansion of the prestige and influence of the WFTU.
TUI’s action must remain at the center of our attention. Through this action we come closer to the contemporary needs and daily struggles of the workers in the sectors they work in. Closer to the demands for work regulated by collective agreements and for guaranteed labor rights and trade union freedoms. In May we are recommending a meeting of the Secretariat with the TUI leaders to address existing problems and to strengthen the role and presence of the TUIs of the WFTU in the sectors they represent.
It is important at this time to pay attention to the realization of our regional congresses, as well as the TUI congresses that are delayed. Already the regional meetings in Europe, Latin America and the Arab World have been scheduled. We should also launch congresses for the committees we have set up within the WFTU. The World Congress for Young Workers is already scheduled for June.
Significant work is also planned in the field of trade union and ideological education, as well as in the field of information dissemination, information exchange and monitoring of developments on issues concerning workers. An important development in the field of education is also the initiative of creating the International Labor Institute by old, distinguished WFTU cadres as well as scientists and academics linked to the class-oriented trade union movement. With this Institute the WFTU Secretariat decided that we should have a close cooperation and use its presence to upgrade the WFTU’s educational activity.
Finishing my address I want to assure you that WFTU leadership will be always beside of you helping and supporting your action and your struggles.
I wish every success to your meeting. I am sure that your estimations and your decisions will be very important for your future action for the benefit of the workers not only of your sector, but for the working class in general
For the class-oriented Trade Union movement, for the workers who resist, who do not compromise with oppression, discrimination and exploitation, there is only one path of dignity: the path of the struggles.
The weapon of the working class is Solidarity and Internationalism.
The system that generates crisis and reproduces exploitation can be defeated. With our united and organized struggles 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.
– Long live the Trade Union Class Struggles
– Long live solidarity and internationalism