#14N: European General Strike

Soulevons-nous! Erheben wir uns! Solleviamoci!

Last month, Por­tugal’s largest trade union CGTP called a gen­eral strike for Novem­ber 14 against the “exploit­a­tion and impov­er­ish­ment” of the Por­tuguese population.

The union stressed the need to change gov­ern­ment policies “for the sake of a bet­ter future” and urged all to join in the protest against the gov­ern­ment and its recently announced aus­ter­ity meas­ures for next year. Turn­ing its back on CGTP, the country’s second largest trade union UGT decided to go it alone, with leader João Proença say­ing his union would not be join­ing the gen­eral strike due to CGTP’s “divis­ive and par­tisan intent”, like call­ing a gen­eral strike without pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion. “This strike is against the gov­ern­ment, but also against UGT,” said Proença, adding that his union may organ­ise another gen­eral strike in the near future.

Now, Spain’s main trade uni­ons have announced that they too will join the strike on Novem­ber 14 and thus “cel­eb­rate the first Iberian gen­eral strike”, said Fernando Lezcano, spokes­per­son for the trade union fed­er­a­tion Con­fed­era­ción Sin­dical de Com­i­siones Obreras, which called the strike in agree­ment with its coun­ter­part Unión Gen­eral de Tra­ba­jadores and other smal­ler uni­ons, after a week of protests against Prime Min­is­ter Mari­ano Rajoy’s government.

Greece recently held its second gen­eral strike in three weeks and the head of Greece’s trade union fed­er­a­tion Gen­eral Con­fed­er­acy of Greek Work­ers (GSEE), Ylan­nis Pan­ago­poulos, has already declared that another gen­eral strike would be held on Novem­ber 14.

Mean­while, other South European coun­tries may con­sider join­ing Por­tugal, Spain and Greece in the protests, after the European Trade Union Con­fed­er­a­tion (ETUC) enticed all European coun­tries to oppose aus­ter­ity in the face of the cur­rent eco­nomic crisis. After a meet­ing in Brus­sels on Octo­ber 17, the ETUC’s exec­ut­ive com­mit­tee called for a “day of action and solid­ar­ity” for a Social Com­pact for Europe, on Novem­ber 14.

In Bel­gium some uni­ons are open to action. These include Metal Lois Wallonie-​Bruxelles (FGTB), the FGTB region Liège-​Huy-​Waremme and ACOD LRB (Local and Regional Author­it­ies) Brus­sels, and also the FGTB Jeunes. The union ACV domes, and ACLVB AVBB are con­sid­er­ing a demo. Source: “Towards a European gen­eral strike!”

Malta and Cyprus: also known as two of the coun­tries where strikes will occur on 14 Novem­ber. Same source as above.

France: Five trade union move­ments call­ing for demon­stra­tions on 14 Novem­ber in the frame­work of N 14, these being the CGT, the CFDT, FSU, the UNSA and Sol­idaires. Source: “Aus­ter­ite: 5 syn­dicats appelent to mani­fest and France le 14 Novembre”.

UK: act­iv­ists of the Civil Ser­vice Rank and File Net­work, an ini­ti­at­ive of offi­cials who want to fight against attacks on their rights from gov­ern­ment and man­age­ment, call­ing for a day of action on 14 Novem­ber to hold against deteri­or­a­tion of their work­ing con­di­tions. Source: “Call for a day of action against attacks on civil ser­vice terms and con­di­tions”. The call refers to the strikes that were announced pre­vi­ously in other coun­tries on that day, and calls on people to join the strike initiative.

LINKS

Web­site http://​european​strike​.org
fb http://​www​.face​book​.com/​E​u​r​o​p​e​a​n​S​t​r​ike
twit­ter https://​twit​ter​.com/​S​t​r​i​k​e​E​u​r​o​p​ean
Tcb https://​www​.thechange​book​.org/​p​a​g​e​s​/​7​87/

This entry was posted on 29 October 2012 at 8:15 am and is filed under Europe, Radical Politics. Published under Creative Commons (CC) Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License: You are welcome to share and remix this content for non-commercial purposes. Kindly acknowledge and hyperlink the source.