Os Cangaceiros
21st June 2011, 22:42
It's a somewhat long piece, but it's worth reading. If for nothing else than a description of the scale of working class actions, most of which were directly related to the fightback against cuts/austerity:
Thus, in the single two-day period of October 21 and 22, 2010, while France was still largely paralyzed by massive strikes opposing President Sarkozy’s attempt to change the retirement age,6 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn6) and the Acropolis and the Piraeus port in Athens remained closed by workers blockading them,7 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn7) Spanish air traffic controllers faced a threat of being fired (shades of Reagan) by their government for striking.8 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn8)While firefighters in Ireland,9 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn9)and London struck, as did Lancaster taxi drivers, while Sellafield nuclear power plant workers who blocked traffic during a march.10 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn10) Elsewhere in the UK Swindon Leisure Center workers struck protesting cuts by the local council, while the National Union of Journalists members voted to strike Newsquest in Hampshire over a 2 year wage freeze.11 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn11) In Northern Ireland, a court order demanded an end to a strike at a meat factory. Dutch postal workers planned to strike.12 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn12)British unions promised large scale public sector strikes after the government’s announcement of its economic program involving massive service cuts and elimination of 500,000 civil service jobs.13 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn13) Over a thousand Romanian Dock workers protested IMF and EU sponsored austerity plans and demanded higher wages.14 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn14) In Croatia, unions threatened a general strike after the Constitutional Court rejected a referendum to reform labor laws.15 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn15) Outside Europe that same day, Tobago public servants marched in solidarity with their striking colleagues in Trinidad, and the University of the West Indies offered concessions to its striking staff;16 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn16) University staff were on strike also in Nigeria;17 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn17) Ghanaian teachers and professors were on strike and in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, high school teachers were on strike to start the school year, while in Italy, the university semester’s start was blocked by a months-long strike by ricercatori, the entry-level professors protesting massive cuts and changes in Italian Universities;18 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn18) National Water Commission workers, members of Jamaica’s National Workers Union struck in the face of a court order, demanding a 7% pay increase, in the wake of an earlier demand by Jamaican unions to reject IMF policy demands.19 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn19) A general strike in that country had only a month earlier been narrowly averted by government concessions that made the IMF demands a dead letter.20 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn20)
Strikes were at the same time spreading throughout many countries in Africa, in addition to the education sector strikes: In Kenya, 80,000 workers struck tea companies to protest the introduction of tea-picking machines;21 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn21) in Swaziland, the logistics and transport company Unitrans fired 43 striking workers and got a court order requiring workers to cease adhering to their own self-set hours of 7 am to 4 pm;22 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn22) diamond production workers were on strike in Botswana;23 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn23) in Zambia, striking miners were shot at with firearms by their bosses at a Chinese company;24 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn24) and in Zimbabwe airline workers struck while public service workers demanded that diamond revenues be used to increase their pay.25 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn25)In Benin, unions organized protests that same week against the government’s ban on organized demonstrations.26 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn26) Only a few weeks earlier, city workers in Uganda had occupied government offices.27 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn27) In Nigeria, oil workers had postponed a strike the previous Spring after a10% pay raise conceded by the government.28 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn28) But in the Fall, they struck over a proposed law on oil that oil multinationals had lobbied for, and over local activities by Exxon.29 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn29) Doctors in Lagos were on strike, university staff and lecturers stepped up ongoing strikes, electrical workers threatened an indefinite strike and government workers in that country threatened a strike over a minimum wage.30 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn30)
Bangladesh, which has seen enormous strikes and clashes with police by workers, especially from the garment industry, was that same day witnessing a massive dock strike that faced military repression, a strike by jute workers and one by garment workers in various parts of the country, all threatening the country’s export revenues.31 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn31) Pilots in that country defied government warnings and began a strike on the 23rd.32 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn32)Elsewhere, sugar workers in Guyana had just ended a strike when faced with government repression,33 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn33) 500 workers at Foxconn in India had been arrested for labor activity,34 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn34) DHL, the global logistics company faced worldwide labor conflict over its policies.35 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn35) Turkish UPS workers, sustained by considerable international solidarity, were involved a struggle over fired colleagues.36 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn36) In Chile, 80,000 public workers were on strike as miners at that country’s massive Collahuasi copper mine prepared to vote to strike,37 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn37)and hospital construction workers prepared to do likewise.38 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn38) Bank workers in Brazil had just ended a strike after winning the largest pay raise in years,39 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn39) and auto workers had only weeks before won their highest pay raises ever through striking.40 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn40) The conflict over a pay increase and housing allowance that had sparked a massive general strike of public sector workers in South Africa the month before was only finally settled that same week,41 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn41) while in Argentina a city wide general strike in Buenos Aires was threatened over the death of a railway worker, as sanitation workers in the city were just returning to work after a 3-day strike.42 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn42)In Vietnam, another epicenter of the strike wave of the past three years, along with Bangladesh, Egypt, South Africa and Cambodia, 2,000 workers were on strike at a shoe factory.43 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn43) In South Korea the country’s largest union federation was planning for demonstrations against the G20 meeting in that country a few weeks later.44 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn44)
Egypt had seen a relative quiet compared with the mass strikes of 2006-8, but that calm ended the same day. Workers demonstrated nationwide, just days after having protested government repression of workers’ political activism in Cairo.45 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn45)Palestinian workers struck a Green Line Israeli factory over nonpayment of wages, as their co-nationals went on strike against the UN agency handling health services in the refugee camps.46 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn46) Staff at the Palestinian colleges and universities held a sit-in at the Education Ministry of the Palestinian Authority.47 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn47)
In the Czech republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and elsewhere, unions warned, threatened or prepared for new actions over austerity programs, while strikes in Croatia and Serbia had only recently died down over some of the EU’s demands on those countries for austerity as preconditions for membership.48 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn48)Ukrainian workers had just won a five-month long strike at a sausage factory, winning a big pay increase.49 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn49) In Kazakhstan, Oil workers struck to protest the arrest of a union activist.50 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn50)
http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm
Thus, in the single two-day period of October 21 and 22, 2010, while France was still largely paralyzed by massive strikes opposing President Sarkozy’s attempt to change the retirement age,6 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn6) and the Acropolis and the Piraeus port in Athens remained closed by workers blockading them,7 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn7) Spanish air traffic controllers faced a threat of being fired (shades of Reagan) by their government for striking.8 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn8)While firefighters in Ireland,9 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn9)and London struck, as did Lancaster taxi drivers, while Sellafield nuclear power plant workers who blocked traffic during a march.10 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn10) Elsewhere in the UK Swindon Leisure Center workers struck protesting cuts by the local council, while the National Union of Journalists members voted to strike Newsquest in Hampshire over a 2 year wage freeze.11 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn11) In Northern Ireland, a court order demanded an end to a strike at a meat factory. Dutch postal workers planned to strike.12 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn12)British unions promised large scale public sector strikes after the government’s announcement of its economic program involving massive service cuts and elimination of 500,000 civil service jobs.13 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn13) Over a thousand Romanian Dock workers protested IMF and EU sponsored austerity plans and demanded higher wages.14 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn14) In Croatia, unions threatened a general strike after the Constitutional Court rejected a referendum to reform labor laws.15 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn15) Outside Europe that same day, Tobago public servants marched in solidarity with their striking colleagues in Trinidad, and the University of the West Indies offered concessions to its striking staff;16 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn16) University staff were on strike also in Nigeria;17 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn17) Ghanaian teachers and professors were on strike and in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, high school teachers were on strike to start the school year, while in Italy, the university semester’s start was blocked by a months-long strike by ricercatori, the entry-level professors protesting massive cuts and changes in Italian Universities;18 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn18) National Water Commission workers, members of Jamaica’s National Workers Union struck in the face of a court order, demanding a 7% pay increase, in the wake of an earlier demand by Jamaican unions to reject IMF policy demands.19 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn19) A general strike in that country had only a month earlier been narrowly averted by government concessions that made the IMF demands a dead letter.20 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn20)
Strikes were at the same time spreading throughout many countries in Africa, in addition to the education sector strikes: In Kenya, 80,000 workers struck tea companies to protest the introduction of tea-picking machines;21 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn21) in Swaziland, the logistics and transport company Unitrans fired 43 striking workers and got a court order requiring workers to cease adhering to their own self-set hours of 7 am to 4 pm;22 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn22) diamond production workers were on strike in Botswana;23 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn23) in Zambia, striking miners were shot at with firearms by their bosses at a Chinese company;24 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn24) and in Zimbabwe airline workers struck while public service workers demanded that diamond revenues be used to increase their pay.25 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn25)In Benin, unions organized protests that same week against the government’s ban on organized demonstrations.26 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn26) Only a few weeks earlier, city workers in Uganda had occupied government offices.27 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn27) In Nigeria, oil workers had postponed a strike the previous Spring after a10% pay raise conceded by the government.28 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn28) But in the Fall, they struck over a proposed law on oil that oil multinationals had lobbied for, and over local activities by Exxon.29 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn29) Doctors in Lagos were on strike, university staff and lecturers stepped up ongoing strikes, electrical workers threatened an indefinite strike and government workers in that country threatened a strike over a minimum wage.30 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn30)
Bangladesh, which has seen enormous strikes and clashes with police by workers, especially from the garment industry, was that same day witnessing a massive dock strike that faced military repression, a strike by jute workers and one by garment workers in various parts of the country, all threatening the country’s export revenues.31 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn31) Pilots in that country defied government warnings and began a strike on the 23rd.32 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn32)Elsewhere, sugar workers in Guyana had just ended a strike when faced with government repression,33 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn33) 500 workers at Foxconn in India had been arrested for labor activity,34 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn34) DHL, the global logistics company faced worldwide labor conflict over its policies.35 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn35) Turkish UPS workers, sustained by considerable international solidarity, were involved a struggle over fired colleagues.36 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn36) In Chile, 80,000 public workers were on strike as miners at that country’s massive Collahuasi copper mine prepared to vote to strike,37 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn37)and hospital construction workers prepared to do likewise.38 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn38) Bank workers in Brazil had just ended a strike after winning the largest pay raise in years,39 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn39) and auto workers had only weeks before won their highest pay raises ever through striking.40 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn40) The conflict over a pay increase and housing allowance that had sparked a massive general strike of public sector workers in South Africa the month before was only finally settled that same week,41 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn41) while in Argentina a city wide general strike in Buenos Aires was threatened over the death of a railway worker, as sanitation workers in the city were just returning to work after a 3-day strike.42 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn42)In Vietnam, another epicenter of the strike wave of the past three years, along with Bangladesh, Egypt, South Africa and Cambodia, 2,000 workers were on strike at a shoe factory.43 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn43) In South Korea the country’s largest union federation was planning for demonstrations against the G20 meeting in that country a few weeks later.44 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn44)
Egypt had seen a relative quiet compared with the mass strikes of 2006-8, but that calm ended the same day. Workers demonstrated nationwide, just days after having protested government repression of workers’ political activism in Cairo.45 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn45)Palestinian workers struck a Green Line Israeli factory over nonpayment of wages, as their co-nationals went on strike against the UN agency handling health services in the refugee camps.46 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn46) Staff at the Palestinian colleges and universities held a sit-in at the Education Ministry of the Palestinian Authority.47 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn47)
In the Czech republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and elsewhere, unions warned, threatened or prepared for new actions over austerity programs, while strikes in Croatia and Serbia had only recently died down over some of the EU’s demands on those countries for austerity as preconditions for membership.48 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn48)Ukrainian workers had just won a five-month long strike at a sausage factory, winning a big pay increase.49 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn49) In Kazakhstan, Oil workers struck to protest the arrest of a union activist.50 (http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm#fn50)
http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/90/w90_in_our_hands_en.htm