The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) conveys a class, internationalist, and militant greetings to its almost 90 million affiliates in more than 120 countries of the world, to the class oriented trade union movement, to every worker all over the globe and calls them to honour this day with strikes, militant events, demonstrations. This year’s May Day finds the global working class under hazardous conditions. The recipe of all capitalist governments and imperialist mechanisms (IMF, World Bank, EU, etc.) for an “exit from the crisis” is the same in every country: pay – cuts, pension – cuts, authoritarianism, austerity, elimination of social rights, unemployment.
At the same time, the contradictions within the imperialist system, like those we witness these days in Ukraine make the situation for the working class even more dangerous and lead to even more hazardous situations. Alarm bells should be set ringing! These days, at the ILO, employers and capitalist governments want to eliminate the right to strike. That’s why they want to eliminate the recognition of the “right to strike” in Convention 87 of the ILO.
The right to strike was not donated by any government or international organization. It was won through hard workers’ struggles and it will continue to exist only by the workers struggles! The WFTU demands: Hands off the right to strike and calls the international class oriented trade union movement to organize massive and militant mobilizations to defend it. Unemployment, on international level, strikes mercilessly the working class and their children; it becomes a lever to increase exploitation, especially among women and young people of the working class and the popular strata.
This May Day, the WFTU calls the international class oriented trade union movement to fight against the phenomenon of unemployment as a whole: to struggle for the survival of the unemployed, organize the unemployed in the trade unions, fight for social benefits for the unemployed and struggle for the right to stable and permanent job for everybody and fight against unemployment and the factors that generate this phenomenon. Let’s make this May Day a starting point for the preparation of the WFTU International Action Day October 3rd 2014, which has as its central topic the fight against unemployment. Because, unemployment is a phenomenon inherent in the capitalist system. Workers all over the world, there’s no reason why our working class should live in poverty, unemployment, face hunger, imperialist wars or lack public and free healthcare and education. The WFTU calls all workers to unite under its banners, to strike, march militantly, defend the right to strike, fight for stable and steady work for all, for trade union freedoms and social rights. The future of the working class cannot be exploitation and capitalist barbarism.
The WFTU for this May Day and for everyday makes a call to all workers, based on the main slogan of the “Athens Pact”, our main political and trade union document, voted at the 16 World Trade Union Congress in 2011:
Workers rise up! against capitalist barbarism, for social justice, for a world without exploitation!