Solidarity message to the General Strike in Spain

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 10:10:29 +0000

The Alliance of Progressive Labor – a national labor center in the Philippines composed of various types of workers’ organizations in the private, informal and migrant sectors – wishes to convey the warmest and deepest solidarity of the Filipino workers to the general strike today in Spain led by the UGT and CC.OO, and which will also be actively participated in by the IUF Spanish affiliates that belong to either confederation. One of our affiliates, NUWHRAIN, is also a longtime IUF member.

We fully support the September 29 nationwide strike as it is an earnest and compelling expression of the Spanish working people and their labor movement to say:

NO – to irrational cuts in public expenditures that will eventually batter the workers and ordinary citizens, including the children, sick, pensioners and indigents, by depriving them of many social benefits and government services that they justly deserved;

NO – to sharp reduction in public investments which will turn back economic growth, will worsen unemployment, and will offer on a silver platter the national economy to giant corporations unduly making them ominously richer and more powerful;

NO – to the so-called labor “reforms” that will in fact curtail or dilute many established labor and trade union rights that have been achieved after decades of struggles, that have been enjoyed by generations of workers and citizens, and obviously a ploy to further weaken and divide trade unionism.

As what is happening throughout the world, including here in the Philippines, the supposed “shock treatment” of the Spanish government to address the lingering effects of the global economic crisis is but a contradictory solution to a problem that was actually triggered by capitalist logic which condemned workers to stagnating, if not declining, wages for decades to maximize profits. Thus, these policies are nothing but a smokescreen to continue imposing the discredited neoliberal economic programs of liberalization, deregulation and privatization, along with an aggressive flexibilization of labor and all-out anti-union practices.

But we in the trade unions and in the broad labor and social movements will eventually prevail.

Viva la UGT y CC.OO!

Viva los trabajadores y trabajadoras en España!

¡A la Huelga General!

http://www.apl.org.ph/

Indymedia Estrecho / Madiaq - union

Solidarity message to the General Strike in Spain