After the 31 March demonstration against the new proposed labour legislation (the ‘loi travail’), demonstrators decided not to go home; they re- assembled at Place de la République to keep vigil and debate the society they wanted to build, and the Nuit Debout movement was born. It is difficult to...
In recent years, the Indignados and Occupy movements attracted previously unengaged, unorganised and de-politicised sections of the population and garnered significant attention in the media.
International solidarity can be understood as cooperation between trade-union organisations that, by their nature, share the same objectives because they represent the workers of their countries. It takes on a special importance when the workers are employed by the same multinational company or in...
Less than a year ago, the whole Arab Region, from Tunisia in the West to Yemen in the South East, was the arena of a gigantic and extraordinary popular uprising for freedom and democracy. The decades-old dictatorships of Hosni Mubarak and Zine el Abidine Ben Ali were overturned in a few weeks, and...
In Spain the crisis of 2007/2008 marked the end of a long political cycle. Since the 1980s, a big centre coalition tried to build a modern welfare state on the ruins of a destroyed labour society and to finance it through speculation and debts. From a historical perspective, this project...
This article attempts to illustrate the particularities of the Greek movement organised against the austerity measures, imposed by the government under the auspices of the EU and the IMF. Apart from its economic demands, the movement calls for a more just political system in the direction of direct...
In a statement submitted to the Seoul Summit of the G20, the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) recalls that “the economic crisis that has disrupted the lives of so many wage earners is far from being over – the crisis has become a social one. There are, today, over 220 million...
Part One
Cairo, February 7
Turbulent days lay behind us and the revolution was still going on. At least, internet was back and phones working. On this day the city returned to a sort of normal life, with the usual restrictions that come with any revolution such as blocked off streets around...
There is no doubt: the trade unions, particularly the German ones, represent reliable supporters of Europe. Although the unions repeatedly emphasise that Europe could be more social, they mostly support European unification without voicing any fundamental criticisms. However, this unswervingly...
The event
On April 23, 2009, a group of unemployed textile workers in Novi Pazar, southern Serbia, began a hunger strike. Their main demand – in the name of all 1,532 members of the Association of Textile Workers of Novi Pazar, Sjenica, and Tutin – was the payment of outstanding...
The latest figures show that unemployment in Portugal exceeded 9% for the first time. Short-term labour contracts increased by over 50% in the last ten years. The state itself is exploiting precarious workers for permanent tasks. Young people are the most affected by this problem and organisations...
In his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx analyses the rise of a reactionary demagogue as an expression of the sharpening of social contradictions in mid 19th-century France. As in present times, conservative tendencies within the popular classes have played a key instrumental role there....
The European Trade Union Confederation issued an important open letter, considering the historical dimension in the confrontation between the European institutions and the Greek government.
When on October 4th, 2018 a group of political friends announced a demonstration under the title 'It's Thursday again', nobody would have guessed that this would mark the beginning of an outstanding series of protests against the Austrian right-wing extremist government.
On Sunday, 16th of December more than 30,000 people rallied against a new „Slave Law” passed by the Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's right wing government. We bring the overview of the developments.
We analyse and engage the challenges of climate change from the perspective of our “productive transformation” project. For us only a systemic change of the whole capitalistic system can be real solution to anthropocentric climate change.
Albanian students are protesting en masse against a new hike in tuition fees in one of the poorest countries of the continent. While the medium wage in Albania is 350 euros per month, the tuition fees can go up to 2000 euros per year. The government wanted to make students pay for retake exams but...
Emmanuel Macron is confronted with the strongest social mobilisations in France since his election. Even though these mobilisations are heterogeneous and gather a large variety of struggles, they were originally triggered by Macron’s rail reform which embodies the President’s harsh neoliberal agenda.
Emmanuel Macron and his government are facing their first major social disputes. The complexity and multi-sector nature of the movement raise interesting questions.
Convincing his European partners, above all Germany, that France will embrace structural reforms in order to get a new deal for Europe with more public investment, the introduction of Eurobonds and a strengthening of the common budget: this is the strategy Macron has been putting forward since the first day of his presidency.
It’s not that the class question could ever be pushed aside totally. It preserved a shadowy Marxist existence. Sometimes, however, it surfaced surprisingly in the feature pages of newspapers, only then swiftly to disappear again. At this point, hardly anyone denies it: we are living in a class society (again).
“We put forward a holistic worldview, one that sees the interrelations between the ongoing occupation of Palestinian Territories, the growing social and economic disparities within the Israeli society, and the attacks by the government on democratic freedoms and on the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
The so-called Labour Law, passed en force by the French government on 20 July, is the most serious attack against the “Code du Travail”, already undermined for the past thirty years. A short historical overview is necessary to better grasp the destructive scope of this law, promoted and enforced by a socialist government – cruel irony!
Faced with a democracy that has been denied, an authoritarian government and repressed social movements, the seven trade unions that have spent almost three months fighting against the El Khomri bill (CGT, FO, FSU, Solidaires, Unef, UNL and FIDL) and in favour of a labour law commensurate with the 21st century are organising a referendum in companies, administrative bodies and research centres.
The dismantling of labour and social rights has gained in strength on the EU political agenda ever since the crisis broke out. This phenomenon, if more acute in the so-called periphery countries, is however to be witnessed everywhere in Europe.
When it launched its umpteenth reform, the French government was counting on a trade union movement weakened by in-fighting and defeats, on pensions in particular.
The European Crisis is leading to rampant chauvinism, racism, and disintegration. Driven by this dynamic Europe is governed by state-of-emergency politics. Austerity, an intensified dismantling of labour and social rights and an inhuman, militarized border regime are being implemented in authoritarian ways, while asylum law is being whittled away.
The labour movement in France is facing an unprecedented attack in the form of a radical bill introduced by the government that would largely dismantle the rights and guarantees enshrined in the Labour Code. However, this attempt is being opposed by a new dynamic combining trade union activism with an extraordinary mobilisation of youth, largely via social media, unseen on this scale since the lead-up to the mass protest against the First Job Contract in 1996.
We call all precarious workers, migrants and refugees, activists, autonomous groups and unions to make 1 March 2016 a day of decentralized and coordinated actions and strikes, aimed at disrupting regular production and reproduction, producing communication among different working conditions, making visible hidden situations of exploitation, targeting the border regime and the institutions that govern mobility and precarity.
The European Trade Union Confederation issued an important open letter, considering the historical dimension in the confrontation between the European institutions and the Greek government.
In cooperation with Laura Horn and the Global Dynamic Research Cluster “Structural Adjustments come to Europe”, Transform! held a workshop on the 9th of May at the Roskilde University on European Social Movements. It aimed at bringing together social movements researchers and activists to discuss the Europeanization of the resistance against austerity and for democracy, the relation between grassroots movements and trade unions, the role of the European Left, as well as the implications of the new political momentum in Europe opened up by SYRIZA’s electoral victory.
The Party of the European Left (EL), which was holding its Executive Board meeting last weekend in Brussels, participated with all its members in the demonstration that took place on 18 April in the Belgian capital against the TTIP, CETA and TISA. They did it carrying a banner with the slogan “For the democracy, the public and social services. Stop TTIP”. This rally, in the host city of the European Commission, was part of 734 activities organized in 46 countries across 5 continents.
On a hot day and despite the usual cold British weather in London, 4,000 delegates, among them works councils, trade union leaders, community representatives, spokespersons of social movements and leftist politicians like Tony Benn gathered on Saturday, 22 June in the time-honoured Central Hall in Westminster to the hitherto largest conference against austerity policy that has ever taken place in the UK.
On 14 November – in the middle of the week – something new happened. Radiating from Spain and Portugal unionists in Italy, Greece, France, and Belgium laid down work. A coordinated “Day of Actions and Solidarity” as has never before taken place in Europe. A day of resistance against the restructuring plans of Europe for which Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, had coined the short phrase: “The European social model is dead”.
A coalition committed to creating a new balance of power in Europe announced six months of mobilization against the EU “austeritarian” choices. Actions at European level shall culminate in an Alter Summit in early June.
The 1st Balkan Forum took place within the 2012 Subversive Forum in Zagreb on May 17th and 18th and gathered up to 40 progressive organisations and movements from across the region. During two days of intensive discussion panel participants and audience members analysed current social struggles in...
The Alternative World Water Forum (AWWF) took place in Marseille from 14 to 17 March. The official Forum on Water took place at the same time. The latter was a strikingly bitter failure, with only 3,000 participants of the 20,000 expected.
The AWWF, on the other hand, with far less resources,...