TO UNITE THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT IN ORDER TO GRANT THE WORKERS RIGHTS AND ADVANCE IN THE CHANGES

Brazil, 2008 January – CGTB

The unity of the workers is the main force of the peoples to grant their independence and follow the path of development and social justice.  In all the countries, this has been the dominant factor to put forward our struggle in order to set us free of the robbery of the monopolies, the cartels, responsible for hunger and misery in the entire world.

We had to resist the direct pillage of our raw materials, the degradation of the salaries, the unequal exchange, the financial depletion through the external debt and repatriation of profits then we came to the hard fight to stop the assault of the public patrimony, known as privatization. Strategical sectors as telecommunications, energy, mining, petrochemical, railways, banks, airports, ports, pharmaceutical industries, among others passed to the big transnational corporations’ control. Those monopolies, in special the North-Americans, control 52% of the Gross Domestic Product of the entire world, turning evident the brutal denationalization, a wealth concentration without precedent in history and the strangulation of the economies of the developing countries.

In order to extract the super profits they have also, as their target, to squeeze the salaries and make retreat the workers’ rights.  Because of that, the pillars of the so called globalization (new face of imperialism) are exactly the rent concentration and work deregulation: “flexibilization” of the salaries, reduction of the workers protection, growth of informality and attack against the benefits of the retired people, besides the dismantling of the public health system.

The workers were the main challenge to the devastation of the State, imposition of the “minimum State” at to hinder the return to the jungle law.  Their unity yielded in the resistance to the cartels spoliation galvanized the most diverse social sectors. Broad national and progressist forces passed to the counter-offensive. 

Comrades, we live in a moment were the economic and social development become sustained by the developing countries as China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, South Africa, among others.  In 2006, the world economy has grown 5.4% and, at the same time, the growth of the economy of these countries was of 7.9% at a time in which the developed countries (US, Japan, Germany, etc.) presented only 3.1%. At the IMF rating itself, the growth in 2007 was of 5.2%, being China, Russia and India responsible for half of that increase. While the US – that has the economy and the State controlled by the big world corporations -, is at the door of recession after the collapse of pyramid of the mortgage rotten papers.

Bush’s failure

Besides armed to the teeth – with nuclear bombs, conventional, tactical and fragmentation weapons; missiles, and so on -, Bush’s government seeks more support by the media monopolies. Plotting with CIA, they “bombard” daily the homes of millions of people all over the world with their lies and facts’ deceit as occurred with the false dissemination of the existence of mass destruction weapons in Iraq, the plead used to “justify” the second invasion, passing over the UN Security Council itself.  Equally, the trial of demonizing some countries and their leaders, as Cuba, Popular Korea, Libya, Iraq and now Venezuela, stigmatized, just because of their independence, as if belonging to the "evil axis". CNN, Fox, CBS, ABC, The New York Times and the other media vehicles seem more the US State Department in action itself.

Heroically, at the cost of a lot of blood and sacrifice, the peoples of all the continents resist the looting and show the real face of the State terrorism practiced by the Empire: the lies used to invade and spread death in Iraq, the concentration camp of Guantanamo and the tortures at Abu Ghraib; the massacres in Afghanistan; the support to Zionist genocide in Palestine and to the plot in Venezuela; the shelling and slashing of Yugoslavia; the blockade imposed on Cuba and Popular Korea; the interferences in Syria, Lebanon, Zimbabwe, Sudan and so many other countries; the abandoning of the people of New Orleans, after Katrina, to their own luck.  All that shows the imperialism degradation.

Bush is repudiated all over the world. Hundred of thousands took the streets of United States rejecting the Iraq War and demanding the return of the troops. Isolated, his tour in Latin America, at the beginning of 2007, was the biggest failure. He was marked with the seal of Terrorist Number One at the streets of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay, Guatemala, Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador and El Salvador. The peoples in the streets said no to war and yes to peace.

The advances in Latin America

The South American peoples are uniting themselves at Mercosur and by the constitution of the South American Community of Nations. Many advances have been conquered. In the majority of the Latin American countries, the neoliberal governments were swept out. The ones that surged from this popular storm are: Lula in Brazil, Nestor and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina; Chavez in Venezuela; Evo in Bolivia; Correa at Ecuador, Tabare in Uruguay; Michele Bachelet in Chile and Ortega at Nicaragua.

The each time bigger unity of the workers has been the nucleus of the union of the patriotic forces to sustain and make advance the changes that are necessary in order to break apart the economic retard and social evils inherited from the past. The integration and solidarity between the Latin American countries advances, in special the South American ones. This is expressed in the growth of trade between them and in the infrastructure works, exemplified by the Interoceanic Corridor which passes through Brazil, Bolivia and Chile, and will link the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; the conclusion of Yacireta hydroelectric plant, built jointly by Argentina and Paraguay; the energetic integration between Bolivia, Venezuela and Argentina; by the building of a gas thermo-electric in the region of Chapare and a plant for natural gas components separation, besides the investments retaken by PETROBRAS in the growth of the Bolivian gas industry and the building of the Gas Pipeline of the South.  An identity of purposes that makes itself present in the exclusion of the dollar in the trade between Brazil and Argentina, that are now using only the countries coins - real and peso - of the two countries.

The automatic allegiance to Washington indications is already in the past. The main fact in this sense was the disarticulation of FTAA, the failed North-American neocolonial assault, dismantled mainly by the joint activity of the Mercosur countries. The IMF, guardian of the monopolies, don’t dictate the rules anymore and the creation of the Bank of the South – with the foundation act already signed by the Presidents of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay broadened much more the horizon for the integration and liberation of the Continent.  This disposition appeared in a clear way when these countries signed out the "Declaration of Buenos Aires" in support to the government of Evo Morales and the recovering by his State of the huge oil and gas reserves.

In front of this new reality, the monopolies, mainly the media, passed to attack savagely the popular leaderships. The most significant cases where Venezuela, in 2002, and Brazil, in 2005. In the first one, the direct action of CIA and the media committed a plot, but President Chavez was empowered again by the mobilization of the people in the streets. In the second case, the plotist media launched a campaign that endured more than a year trying to overthrow Lula. The unity of the workers and social movements obstructed the plot and reelected the Brazilian President, in 2006, by a huge majority.

Brazil

After thirty almost uninterrupted years of stagnation of our economy, Brazil has initiated a new and important phase of growth, which opens the perspective of the retaking of the path towards industrialization, initiated with the Revolution of 1930, leaded by Getulio Vargas. This process was interrupted and has deteriorated itself when the antinational groups seized power in 1964, and worsened in the years of 1990 onwards, under the neoliberal barbarism.

Already in the first mandate (2003-2006), the Lula government stopped with the privatizations, the submission to the IMF, which were present until then, and implemented a huge program of social protection, that includes 11 million of low income families. Together with the readjustment of the minimum wage in 30% and the employment growth, this had as a result that 20 millions of people came out from the poverty line. 

At the foreign policy, Lula's government changed strongly the basis of the international trade, which had the trade with US as the priority before.  The new foreign relations policy turned out to give priority to the strengthening of Mercosur and intensify the cooperation ties with China, Russia, India, the African countries, Arabs and the Portuguese spoken countries. It should be enhanced, on this matter, the formation of the G-20 – group of countries that has had an important activity in contraposition, at the economic field, to the expansionist policy of the G-7.

The end of public property donation, the return of the big investments of PETROBRAS, our giant oil State company, the reactivation of sectors that were paralyzed before, as the naval industry, the investments in the production of biological fuel, the improvement of the rent distribution and the independent foreign policy have taken out the country from the economic paralysis that it was experiencing.  One of the most visible faces of that is the trade balance results which were in deficit, before, and turned out to present a surplus of US$ 40 billions a year, in average.

The new economic situation, launched the basis that permitted president Lula, at the beginning of his second mandate, at January, 2007, to announce the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC, abbreviation in Portuguese), that foresees a volume of about US$ 280 billions of investments, mainly in infrastructure and energy, until 2010. There will be allotted US$ 40 billions just to develop popular housing and basic sanitation.

 We would like to enhance also the investments in nuclear energy, which is not pollutant, with the retake of the works of Angra 3 and building of four more plants.   Brazil, besides having the biggest uranium reserve in the world, grasps all the technology of the nuclear fuel cycle. This technology was achieved through our own researches. In relation to energy, another important issue is the struggle against the capture of Brazilian lands by foreign capital, which tries to dominate our bioenergy production.

Facing the foreign capital invasion and the inevitable unbalances that it causes, is one of our main challenges. Though President has paralyzed the privatizations of the federal State companies, since the beginning of his first government, from January to November of 2007 the net direct investment, mainly North American, reached unparalleled proportions: US$ 31 billions, almost the double related to the same period of 2006. The repatriation of profits has also surpassed all the records reaching US$ 18 billions.

The recent discovery by PETROBRAS of the giant oil camp of Tupi, with 8 billions of barrels, situated in an area that may add 107 billions more of oil barrels to the Brazilian reserves.

Unity

We, of CGTB, are working in Brazil in such a way that the unity between workers becomes each time broader and more consistent.  And it was exactly the struggle to face the private monopolies that granted the advances conquered and the solidification of the workers unity.  There isn’t a single relevant discussion in Brazil that has not counted with the participation of the Trade Union Centrals.  That is what occurred in relation to the readjustment of 30% of the minimum wage, the biggest one in the last fifty years, and with the terms of the future readjustments according to the GDP which has been already defined in negotiations with the government. In the National Social Security Forum discussion, the activity of the Centrals was essential to hinder the blow that was plotted by those who aimed the privatization of securities sector. The Social Security has been kept public and our fight is to include in it the workers that still aren’t benefited.  As a fruit of our fight, we are near to achieve the most important victory of the last years, that is the approval at the National Congress of the bill that recognizes the Trade Union Centrals, and includes a system of financing them, which signifies a recognition by all the Brazilian society of the importance of the workers’ representation. We are proposing, inclusively, that the unity which was yielded in the last years be materialized organically, with the creation of the National Congress of the Workers Class (CONCLAT, in Portuguese), a permanent tool of debates, resolutions and joint actions.

Unicity is the nature of workers. Through our struggle it is giving birth to a platform of common action that may and must unify the workers for economic development, for the respect of the nations' sovereignty, in the combat against hunger and misery, for the workers rights, social security, public health and the reduction of the workers journey.