Showing posts with label sit-ins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sit-ins. Show all posts

Saturday, January 07, 2017

A Labour Sit In is Forcibly Dispersed


 IFFCO Company for Oils in the Northern industrial zone west of the Gulf of Suez witnessed an incident in which security forces broke into it on the dawn of last Monday and arrested 12 labour leaders from the company on Monday, January 2, 2017.
 
 Security forces entered the factory and forcibly dispersed a sit in, arresting 12 workers and forced the rest of the workers to leave the factory. This raises the number of workers arrested to 14 after security forces had arrested two labour leaders from the company a few days ago accusing them of calling for a strike.

Capitalism is global and the memories of some are fading as to the true repressive nature of the class struggle All the main sources of information and entertainment are owned by the capitalist class, and these gentry are hardly likely to allow them to be used to call sympathetic attention to the wages question or to be critical of the system of wages payment. They like the wages system and they like wages to be low. It is from this state of affairs that their privileges and luxuries emerge. And they know that the more the minds of the workers are directed into channels remote from wages the less attention will they give to wages, and this can react only to the benefit of the employers.

 But in spite of these diversionary activities, which attain a great deal of success in keeping them passive, workers do give attention to the question of wages. The pressures resulting from their status as wage workers, particularly the constant readiness of the employers to use every opportunity to lower their level of existence, compels activity in their own interest, even though this activity is all too reluctant and lacking in depth.

 Over the years working people throughout the world have employed a variety of methods in the hope of improving their living conditions. They have petitioned Parliament, supported candidates for office, organized political parties. They have paraded in the streets, erected barricades and fought against police. But, most important, they have organized in trade unions which have provided them with their most effective weapon, the strike.

 Workers of the company name dabove had entered into a strike after the administration refused to unify the inflation raise and after the decision to hand out a raise of 20% of the total wage of workers and 15% to the administrators and managers.

  But, above all, the workers, besides making the greatest possible use of the trade union, must also come to recognize that even at their best the unions cannot bring permanent security or end poverty .These aims cannot be gained within the limits of capitalist society .

 When the workers have raised their sights high enough to envisage a society where there can be no conflict over wages, and where each will contribute to the production of wealth according to his ability and receive from the produce according to his needs, they are thinking of a goal that can be gained only after they have become organized into a political organization having for its object the introduction of Socialism. Such an organization is the Socialist Party.