For the Territorial reorganisation of the Working Class

Pioltello (Italy), 8 June, 2014.

When workers set out on the road of class struggle – which is what the workers organised by the SI Cobas at Dielle, at Caat in Turin, at IKEA in Piacenza, at Granarolo in Bologna, at Carrefour, at SDA and in many other battles have done – it soon becomes very apparent that an entire anti-proletarian system has been installed to bring proletarians into submission to capitalist exploitation: the various businesses respond to the struggles with reprisals and sack trade union militants; the regime trade unions support them by trying to break strikes, dividing the workers and organising blacklegs; the bourgeois State sends in its police force to break up the picket lines.

Against all these enemies the workers can count only on their own forces. These forces, when restricted to within one company, may temporarily get the better of their bosses in the odd battle here or there, but they can never achieve victory in the long-term. CLASS UNITY is the way to working-class victory, which starts in the workplace but can only be achieved by breaking out of it, by extending beyond the narrow confines of the firm, and of the sector, and by breaking down the barriers of sex, race and nation, all of which are divisions which only serve capitalism.

UNITY OF THE WORKERS becomes a reality when there is UNITY DURING STRIKES: when workers express solidarity with other sections of workers when they are under attack and take action to support them; at which point a strike is no longer considered a private matter of employees in a particular firm, but rather as a flame to ignite the struggles of more and more workers.

For this to happen there has to an organisation which is fit for purpose, a trade union which can express class demands, a CLASS TRADE UNION. One which:

– puts up an intransigent defence of workers’ interests, that is, which doesn’t subordinate them to either the firm or the national economy (that is, to national and international capitalism);

– doesn’t accept limitations on the use of the strike weapon in exchange for so-called rights (recognition, representation): the bosses only negotiate with a genuine trade union if they are forced to do so; they’d far prefer to sit round the table with their official union accomplices.

In order to develop the unity of wage-earners, whether working or not, the class union must as far as possible be organised not at the level of the workplace or company, but at the territorial level, as in the glorious tradition of the original Camere del Lavoro. A Centre for the Proletariat:

– In which workers meet as members of one class, not as employees of a firm, so they can strengthen the ties of brother/sister hood;

– Which functions as a meeting place for the many workers who work for small companies, the majority in fact, who are isolated from those in the big and medium firms; and also for the ever more numerous unemployed, and thus rekindles their sense of belonging to a class;

– Which becomes the organisational centre for territorial mobilisations of the working class;

– Which becomes point of reference for the many struggles occurring in crisis-hit firms which are today prevented from linking up by the regime trade unions.

– Which promotes the proletarian united front from below through the formation of struggle committees in each firm, which workers can belong to whatever union they are in, and which is tasked with wrenching the leadership of struggles from the regime unions and from the domesticated representative bodies (RSU).

The network created by these territorial structures of the proletarian struggle will form the effective living body of the re-born CLASS UNION.

– LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE OF THE DIELLE WORKERS!
– FOR THE EXTENSION AND STRENGTHENING OF THE SI COBAS!
– FOR A CENTRE OF THE PROLETARIAT IN PIOLTELLO!
– FOR THE REBIRTH OF THE CLASS UNION!