bur372
26th February 2005, 23:14
After reading about May 68 ( in may 1968 2/3 of frances working class were on strike) from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_68
I am starting to begin thinking that a strike could be used instead of a revoloution. I suppose that a strike could be classed as a democracy beacuse you can only really strike in a society which belives in freedom of speech and freedom of expression. You could not strike in nazi germany.
However one paragraph of the article I found very intresting
These strikes were not led by the union movement; on the contrary, the CGT tried to contain this spontaneous outbreak of militancy by channelling it into a struggle for higher wages and other economic demands. Workers put forward a broader, more political and more radical agenda, demanding the ouster of the government and President de Gaulle and attempting, in some cases, to run their factories. When the trade union leadership negotiated a 35% increase in the minimum wage, a 7% wage increase for other workers, and half normal pay for the time on strike with the major employers' associations, the workers occupying their factories refused to return to work and jeered their union leaders, even though this deal was better than what they could have obtained only a month earlier.
Could the idea of workers striking without a union be considered as a true Anarcho-syndicalism? Is a strike without a union more revoloutinary than a strike with a union?
I am starting to begin thinking that a strike could be used instead of a revoloution. I suppose that a strike could be classed as a democracy beacuse you can only really strike in a society which belives in freedom of speech and freedom of expression. You could not strike in nazi germany.
However one paragraph of the article I found very intresting
These strikes were not led by the union movement; on the contrary, the CGT tried to contain this spontaneous outbreak of militancy by channelling it into a struggle for higher wages and other economic demands. Workers put forward a broader, more political and more radical agenda, demanding the ouster of the government and President de Gaulle and attempting, in some cases, to run their factories. When the trade union leadership negotiated a 35% increase in the minimum wage, a 7% wage increase for other workers, and half normal pay for the time on strike with the major employers' associations, the workers occupying their factories refused to return to work and jeered their union leaders, even though this deal was better than what they could have obtained only a month earlier.
Could the idea of workers striking without a union be considered as a true Anarcho-syndicalism? Is a strike without a union more revoloutinary than a strike with a union?