By Alkesh Sharma, IANS,
Chandigarh: Workers across the world are against privatisation and capitalism and a global policy should be formed to prevent discrimination against workers, said communist leaders from European, Asian and Latin American countries gathered here to share their common concerns over unemployment, low wages, poor working conditions and privatization.
Rosane Bertotti, communication secretary of the biggest trade union of Brazil Central Unicados Trabalhadores (CUT), told IANS: “Just like Indian workers, we are also totally against privatization and capitalism.”
“For the last seven years, there is a democratic government in Brazil, so things are improving there. But we still want more respect for the working class and initiation of a dialogue between us (workers) and policy makers.”
CUT was founded around 25-years ago in Brazil and it has 3,299 affiliated entities and over 7 million associated workers.
The labour leaders also raised their voices against the policies of LPG – liberalization, privatization and globalization, and strongly condemned the vicious role of the US in unnecessarily sponsoring it.
Nearly 40 representatives of various trade unions from 20 countries like Brazil, France, Iran, Russia, Vietnam and Cyprus have come here to participate in 13th All India Conference of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) being held in neighbouring Zirakpur town, in Punjab, March 17-21.
“We are badly facing the brunt of capitalism and financial recession that hit France last year. Nearly 25 percent youths in France are unemployed and many others are relying only on part-time jobs,” Helene Bouneaud, representative of General Confederation of Labour in France, told IANS.
She added, “In France, many enterprises have been closed down in the past few months and our government has also failed to formulate a robust industrial policy. We perceive capitalism as an obvious threat for any progressive society and want communist values to prevail all across the world.”
Mohammad Hamzeh, head of international relations of Worker’s House in Iran, told IANS, “We are facing various repercussions of globalization like forced labour, child labour, less wages and increased working hours. The financial crisis was the direct result of privatization and globalization and we consider only the US responsible for all this.”
“Over three million people are jobless in Iran and lakhs of people, especially working in the shoe-making and textile industry, have lost their jobs due to recession. We want to formulate some international guidelines to safeguard the rights of working class from here,” stated Hamzeh.
Worker’s House is an umbrella organization that controls all the trade unions in Iran.
Charalambos Eraclides, regional secretary of Pan-Cyprian Federation of Labour (PFL), said: “We have a communist president working amidst the capitalist system in Cyprus. Big corporates are running our country and there is a lot of exploitation and harassment of labourers in Cyprus.”
PFL represents over 60,000 members of working class in Cyprus.
Talking about the US policies, he added, “We are totally against the policies of the US. They were the main cause of global recession that has very poorly affected our economy. We are a tourism-driven economy but due to this crisis, we have seen a sudden downfall in the number of foreign tourists.”
Besides in the last 10 months the unemployment rate has increased from 4 to 6.5 percent due to the financial crisis, pointed out Eraclides.
Dimitris Christofias from the communist party Akel was elected president of Cyprus in 2008. It happened for the first time in the history of Cyprus that a communist leader is holding the top position in the country.
Rosane Bertotti of Brazil said: “This conference is very important for us and we are in fovour of formulating a global policy to prevent the discrimination of workers all across the world.”
Even the Indian leaders supported their views.
“We are totally against the US-sponsored policy of LPG. We cannot blindly obey their directions like this. Our government is concerned about supporting MNCs and big companies but nobody is bothered about the 16 crore unemployed people of India,” said M.K. Pandhe, president of CITU.
“We will initiate a global protest and fight against these anti-working class policies,” said Pandhe.