On Friday May 26, the Congress of the ETUC concluded in Berlin. A congress that will go down in history for the new bottom reached by the high-paid ETUC executives, turning the so-called “trade union” congress into a platform for the declaration of the new anti-worker attack of the Employers-EU and the local Governments.
The ETUC, which is officially funded by the EU, held a Congress a few months after the QATARGATE scandal in which its then General Secretary played a leading role, without the ETUC saying a word about this scandal. And of course, it cannot say a word as its existence is intertwined with the support of business groups, imperialist organisations and governments.
At the same time, however, in an attempt to prove its usefulness to its bosses, ETUC turned the whole process into a “catwalk” for European Commission officials with dozens of EU representatives taking the floor. Among these, however, the most prominent were the resounding interventions of the European Commission’s own head, Ursula von der Leyen, the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and the General Director of Europe’s employers (BusinessEurope). All of them jointly thanked the ETUC for its valuable services to the EU and the big Capital. They all thanked the ETUC for promoting ‘social dialogues’ and the logic of ‘class cooperation’. All of them, through the ETUC Congress, announced the new anti-workers’ attack of Capital-EU-Governments against the workers, the new era of austerity for the peoples, so as to ensure competitiveness, growth and the profits of the business groups.
All these enemies and exploiters of the workers left to the applause of their servants, the member of the ETUC. In fact, the speech of the President of the Commission was celebrated with standing ovation, with the whole room rising to its feet in honor of the person directly responsible for the energy poverty of Europe’s workers, the massive inflation, the attack on labour rights, the freezing of our wages.
We do not applaud the butchers of the workers! No militant worker, no militant trade union can accept the role of applauding the anti-worker attack! No real workers’ trade union organisation can have anything to do with the filth of the ETUC-type mechanisms.
We salute and support the militant workers, strikers of France, Italy, Britain and the other countries of Europe. Not the bosses, the exploiters of the workers who steal our sweat.
The real trade unions have been organising workers’ struggles and strikes all over Europe for months now for wage increases, for a life with rights. Trade unions in line of demand and confrontation with the business groups, the EU and the governments that serve them. With this line we have succeeded big victories, we overturn the negative correlation, we put obstacles to anti-worker policies.
The trade union movement in Europe has vast experience of how much workers have lost from the line of waiting, inaction, class cooperation and social dialogue promoted by the ETUC and its forces. They are dangerous and bear enormous responsibility for the current, negative situation. They must be isolated from any genuine workers’ organisation.
We strengthen the common action of workers, of the militant trade unions all over Europe, with organization, collective mass action and struggles, with internationalist solidarity, we can overthrow them!
26.5.23
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Nikolas Theodorakis
