WFTU PRESIDENTIAL COUNCIL – CYPRUS March 3/4, 2023
Speech Comrade Pierpaolo Leonardi – USB Italy – WFTU European Office
Comrade General Secretary, Comrade President, Dear Comrades
First of all, I would like to take the opportunity of the first meeting of the new Presidential Council to thank the World Secretariat for its positive assessment of
the organization of the 18th Congress of the World Federation of Trade Unions in Rome. The entire USB has worked to make the Congress a success and to ensure
that all delegates had the best possible conditions for fruitful work, despite the very difficult conditions created by the covid pandemic.
Our country is directly involved in the ongoing war by sending huge amounts of money and weapons to Ukraine in obedience to the European Union’s decision to side with the USA and NATO in the new phase of inter-imperialist competition, which has rapidly turned into a clash of hegemony of the Euro-Atlantic bloc, whose
clear objective is to contain China’s political and economic expansion and to assert the supremacy of the capitalist mode of production and the Western social model.
The impact on the peoples of Europe is very clear: the sanctions against Russia have
led to a sharp increase in the prices of energy materials and, therefore, of all basic necessities. The value of wages and pensions has plummeted and the high cost of living is putting millions of families in dire straits.
Despite the fact that the majority of the population is strongly opposed to the war,
the right-wing government is following exactly the directions and decisions of previous governments of total submission to the dictates of the European Union.
In all European countries, class trade unionism is responding to this situation with
mass mobilizations and strikes. In France and England in particular, but also in all other countries, there are highly participative strikes, which focus not only on the
demand for strong wage and pension increases, but also on the rejection of the war and for an immediate ceasefire. Also in Italy, on Saturday 25 February, a national strike of dockers against the transit of ships loaded with weapons took place, and a demonstration of more than 10,000 people invaded the port and the city of Genoa with the slogan “lower the guns, raise the wages”.
In the face of these powerful and highly participatory strikes, many European governments are trying to attack the right to strike and trade union organization in order to deprive workers and militant class oriented trade unions of an instrument for the defence of workers’ rights and a powerful weapon in the fight against economic decisions and anti-grass roots policies. Moreover, the incidents of denunciations, arrests and police interventions against strikers and our union leaders are increasing every day.
In order to organize a united response at the European level, the European Regional Office of the WFTU, in cooperation with the LAB of the Basque Country, organized
a meeting of the European Secretariat in Bilbao on 15 February ’23, with the
participation of some Spanish state organizations that are members of the WFTU, precisely on the subject of the right to strike.
At the end of the meeting, in addition to renewing solidarity and support for all the
current strikes, it was decided to launch a European campaign and to organize meetings in all our countries to discuss and debate the issue and to promote a week of mobilizations, strikes and blockades in defence of the right to strike and trade union organization, to be held next spring, with the aim also of extending the presence of the WFTU to other countries and to other organizations that share this fight against repression and the attack on trade union rights. The European Secretariat also considers it important to involve the TUI WFTU in order to strengthen this fight in defence of the right to strike.
Finally, I would like to point out that ITUC President, Luca Visentini, is a Union
leader of the UIL one of the three Italian yellow union affiliated ETUC that try to prevent workers from organizing with the USB and, therefore, with WFTU.
Not only did Visentini take two envelopes full of 50.000 euros from Qatar for not publicly denouncing the deaths and dramatic working conditions of word cup workers.
Even former CGIL general secretary, Susanna Camusso, was last week, implicated in the Brussels investigation for money to support her candidature for the ITUC presidency. This shows that the problem is not the corruption of an individual trade unionist but that the whole system of functioning of the ITUC and ETUC is rotten linked to economic interest that are the opposite of the workers’ interests.
It is our job to spread this news among the workers by frontally attacking the ITUC, and to call on the honest and class oriented trade unions to abandon them.
Long live WFTU
Pierpaolo Leonardi
USB Italy – WFTU European Office
