06) AUSTERITY UNDER FIRE

People's Voice Editorial

     Across the planet, the tide of popular anger against "austerity" policies keeps rising. Some of the most publicised examples are in Europe, where huge general strikes and demonstrations have spread to many countries. The European working class and its allies are turning their fire not just on government cutbacks and attacks on social benefits, but on the so-called "treaties" which eliminate any democratic, popular sovereignty. As critics of capitalist globalization have warned since the WTO "Battle in Seattle", these treaties are a strategy by transnational corporations to enforce their "race to the bottom", the push to reduce wages and working conditions to the lowest possible level everywhere. Today this policy is called austerity, supposedly needed to "share the pain" of the capitalist economic crisis. There is no "sharing" by the bosses, just by working people.

     Resistance is not limited to Europe. Look at Indonesia, one of the world's most populous countries, where nearly three million factory workers hit the streets in early October to demand higher wages and an end to the one-year contract system (with no benefits) imposed by employers. Or Latin America, where working people in Venezuela have resoundingly re-elected Hugo Chavez, on a platform to expand the Bolivarian Revolution. The working class is clearly at the centre of an emerging world-wide movement for fundamental social transformation.

     Many Canadian working people share this hunger for a better future for our families and communities. The main bodies of the labour movement, especially the Canadian Labour Congress, need to recognize this reality and step forward to provide stronger leadership. We urge the CLC and the Quebec union federations to seize the moment, by convening a People's Summit of the labour movement and its social allies, to hammer out a united popular struggle to demand people's needs, not corporate greed.