International Auto Workers: Organize solidarity with the struggle against job cuts and police violence

auWritten by: International Auto Workers Coordination on 5 July 2026

 

Dear comrades in the International Automotive Workers' Coordination,

The auto industry is intensifying its attacks on auto workers. VW plans to cut 100,000 jobs worldwide. In Germany alone, four plants employing thousands of workers are set to be closed. Mercedes plans to close a plant in South Africa. Two plants in China have already been shut down. Capitalist competition is a battle of annihilation that is to be waged on the backs of us workers.

In Germany, the slogan “Co-determination through strike starting July 8” is gaining traction. The first strike took place yesterday at Mercedes. We are sending you an article from the special edition (3/26) of the newspaper “Vorwärtsgang,” written by and for colleagues at the German plants of VW, Audi, Porsche, and MAN.

It is obvious that VW’s top management is terrified of a workers’ struggle. On Monday, seven distributors of the workers’ newspaper “Vorwärtsgang” were arrested in front of the Audi plant in Heilbronn and led away in handcuffs. This is a repressive measure the likes of which Germany has not seen since World

War II.
The VW and other auto bosses are showing their true colors. They will stop at nothing to maximize profits.

At the 3rd International Automotive Workers' Conference, we resolved: No struggle should stand alone! Let’s throw a wrench in the automakers’ plans! 

Please spread this information within your organizations and organize solidarity, especially against police violence targeting workers’ solidarity.

Long live international solidarity!

“Vorwärtsgang“, special edition 3-2026 30.06.2026: 

The VW Executive Board’s plans are dead serious! Last Wednesday, VW CEO Blume rallied the Executive Board behind a plan to cut 100,000 jobs and close four plants. If the Supervisory Board meeting on 9 July does not go along with his plan, he intends to push it through against the Supervisory Board’s will at an extraordinary general meeting in August.

Illusions are bursting like soap bubbles: ‘The majority on the Supervisory Board, the VW Act or any contracts will protect us.’ The lifelong lie of ‘co-determination’ has failed spectacularly!

Now there is only one thing that will help: CO-DETERMINATION THROUGH STRIKE ACTION!

The Executive Board must feel, even before the Supervisory Board meeting, what the workforce thinks of these plans. Let’s show them that there is a high price to pay for messing with us! Not a single car, gearbox, axle or spare part will be produced or leave the factory. All workforces across the VW Group must stand together.

Other workforces in the car industry, among suppliers and in other sectors must also show solidarity. Through their attacks, the monopolies and the state are declaring war on us, the working class, across the whole of Europe. We are more united and better organised than these opponents, who can no longer solve any problems.

VW is terrified of our response! On Monday, the Audi management in Neckarsulm called the police. Seven distributors of the Vorwärtsgang and members of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD} were arrested and subjected to hours of identification procedures. What was their crime? They declared their solidarity with the workers’ struggle.

There it is: the dictatorship of the monopolies, operating through a fascistised state apparatus.

Let’s build solidarity on a broader basis! Our response: the VW Executive Board’s plans must be scrapped entirely!

FROM 8 JULY: CO-DETERMINATION THROUGH STRIKE!

No more Operation Kasangga!

 

Written by: Nick G. on 17 May 2023

Australian soldiers have begun a training exercise, Operation Kasangga, with the Philippines Army in the province of Rizal, 57 kilometres east of Manila.

The Philippines Army is a reactionary, anti-people armed force which has long been deployed to counter the Communist Party of the Philippines and its New People’s Army.

In training the army of the Filipino ruling class, the Australian Defence Force is standing on the wrong side of history, standing in the way of the liberation of the people of the Philippines from imperialism, feudalism and capitalism.

It comes immediately after last month’s involvement of the US military in the biggest Balikatan joint US-Philippines training exercise so far.

Operation Kasangga will involve around 200 troops from the Philippines and 50 from Australia in a monthlong exercise. It will focus on urban operations, combat tracking, jungle warfare and survival training, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations.

The first Kasangga exercise was conducted in Fort Magsaysay, Nueva Ecija, from April 11 to June 27, 2022. It lasted two months.

We demand the ADF withdraw from Operation Kasangga.

We support the armed struggle of the people of the Philippines for liberation.

Australia gave a welcome to the Paris Communards

(Above: Original illustration for the Tribune article by H. McClintock)

Written by: George Farwell on 20 April 2023

(We are reprinting in its entirety an article from Tribunears ago, on March 19, 1873, in Melbourne, the steamship "L’Orne" was calle, newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia, published on 22 March 1945. One hundred and fifty yed into port for fresh provisions and medicine. It's purpose was to transport revolutionaries from the Paris Commune to New Caledonia. The incident was recalled by Czech Communist and anti-fascist Egon Kisch in his book Australian Landfall, describing his fight to enter Australia on a speaking tour, despite the Australian government’s attempts to keep him out. George Farwell was a progressively minded writer who published more than 20 books, mostly about the Australian Ourback. We thank the Australian Communist History Twitter account for drawing our attention to this interesting article – eds)

During a reception in Perth to Egon Kisch back in 1935, an old, grey-headed man took him aside, asked if he were interested in the Paris Commune. Kisch was surprised at the question, sixty-four years after the first workers' state had been suppressed in one of the most violent reigns of terror the world has known.

But he was not the man to assume, as some have assumed, that the Commune did not concern us intimately here. He said he was extremely interested.
 
The old man carefully produced a box, took off the lid. Inside was a red flag inscribed in French: "Commune of Paris 1871. Liberty, Fraternity, Equality or Death."

The story of this flag reveals only one of many links with the heroic struggle of the French people which began on March 18, seventy-four years ago.

For close on three months the Commune administered the popular republic, creating new standards of democratic achievement so that after 1917, Lenin was able to declare "the Commune was the first stage of the proletarian revolution, as the Russian Revolution was the second."

The working class movement had learnt vital strategic lessons from the Commune, even though this republic was put down in less than three months with the final coldblooded shooting of a hundred and forty-seven fighters on the Hill of Martyrs. One hundred thousand Parisians were killed, imprisoned, exiled or transported. Many of these were sent to the devilish penal colony of New Caledonia. They were chained inside iron cages on the convict ships and forced to endure shocking and barbarous conditions in the islands.

Roger Grenier, the old man who had treasured the red flag all those years, was the son of a man who had fought on the barricades, Paul Grenier. Only ten when his father was shipped away in chains, he loyally observed his promise to keep the flag in safety.

Like hundreds of other families, the Greniers were persecuted and humiliated for the "crimes" of their parents, husbands, brothers. But not even the promised reward of a 1,000 francs and a free pardon could persuade the possessors of many of these flags to surrender them to the terrorist General Gallifet.

TWO years later, after considerable agitation, the French Government agreed to send the exiles' families out to New Caledonia. Roger Grenier was one of 600 women and children whose ship anchored in Sydney Harbor in 1873. They were given a mass welcome, given flowers, presents, invitations. A banquet was held for them in the Town Hall. Hundreds of progressive Sydney-siders set out to entertain at least one family in their homes. It was a moving tribute to the Communards and to the cause of international liberty.

Roger Grenier was so impressed with the spirit of freedom he discovered in Australia that he determined to return one day.

When sixteen years later the exiles were reprieved, they passed through Sydney again. Pierre Grenier sailed on to France. Roger remained in Australia.

"Even today," Egon Kisch wrote in his book, Australian Landfall, "Roger Grenier feels himself a son of the Paris Commune, and his daughter and her daughter, who came with him to the reception, must show how well they can speak French."

"'I am a Labor Party man," he told Kisch, still holding the precious flag. 'But my children stand closer to you.'"

WHEN one of the convict ships bearing the Communards to their devil's island reached Melbourne in 1871, the workers demonstrated their sympathy and admiration. News went round that shipboard conditions were so appalling that half of the prisoners were down with scurvy.

Melbourne's trade unionists at once raised £1,500, but they were forbidden by the authorities to help. Henri Rochefort, writer and one of the intellectual leaders of the Commune, was among a party of five who escaped from the solitary New Caledonian Isle of Pines, andreached Newcastle, with the aid of the sympathetic Australian skipper of a coal ship, Captain Low.

"In our beautiful country," Rochefort wrote later, "we would have been arrested, searched and thrown into the nearest prison as pirates and slaves." Instead, because there was then no extradition agreement between France and Australia, they were allowed to go free. 

Democratic Newcastle gave them a fine reception. Rochefort returned eventually to France with his four comrades, one of whom has been foreign affairs delegate to the Commune, another finance minister and a third, editor of the revolutionary Pere Duchesne (the name was revived by one of the illegal underground newspapers during the Nazi occupation of France).

Among the prisoners who passed through Australia was the immortal Louise Michel, a schoolteacher who carried a rifle with the 61st battalion of the National Guard and fought on the barricades.

"I do not wish to defend myself," she declared proudly at her trial. "I belong entirely to the social revolution and I accept full responsibility for everything I have done. If you let me live, I shall never cease to shout vengeance on you who have killed my brothers."

She returned to France, was gaoled again for six years, struggled on earning for herself a revolutionary reputation close to that of women like Vera Figner and Rosa Luxembourg.

ANOTHER Communard who contributed greatly to Australian progress was Lucien Henry, who became the first lecturer in art at the Sydney Technical College, and designed one of the stained glass windows still in the Town Hall. Politically active, he was one of the pioneers of the Socialist Movement in Australia, one of the first Socialist books here being dedicated to him. As an old man he returned to France, joining in Labor's struggle to build a second and more enduring Commune.

Early in the 1880's the Sydney poet, Francis Adams stood in the Pere la Chaise cemetery where the murdered Communards were buried, and wrote:

Is it for nothing, now and evermore,
O you whose sin in life had death in ease,
The murder of your victims beats the door
Wherein your careless carrion lies at peace?

 

CPA (M-L) expresses solidarity with Turkish activist Ecevit Piroğlu

 

Written by: CPA (M-L) on June 4, 2022

The CPA (M-L) has written to the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Serbian Ministry of Justice, and the Ambassadors of Turkey and Serbia, to support Turkish activist Ecevit Piroğlu.

Currently jailed in Serbia, Piroğlu faces extradition to Turkey and imprisonment under anti-terrorist laws. He is not a terrorist, but a revolutionary activist, and we stand in solidarity with him.

The letters follow a similar format to that sent to Serbian Ambassador Stepanovic, below:
...............
H.E. Ambassador Mr. Rade Stefanovic
Embassy of the Republic of Serbia in Canberra

Your Excellency,

I am writing on behalf of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) in relation to the Turkish national Ecevit Piroğlu who is currently facing an extradition request by Turkey for his return to that country from Serbia.

Ecevit Piroğlu was arrested in Serbia in 2021 because he was on the red list for people wanted in Turkey. He was the former director of the Human Rights Association’s branch in the Turkish city of Izmir and a central committee member of the Socialist Democracy Party. He took part in the Gezi resistance and also in the fight against ISIS in Rojava. Because of the Gezi protests he faces trial for terrorism and 30 years prison sentence. 

His appeal against extradition on June 3 was sabotaged by the deliberate mistranslation of his words by the official translator. The hearing will continue n June 17 with a new translator. 

We are concerned that he faces torture and imprisonment under the Turkish Terror Law. In Turkey there is no guarantee for his life or safety. 

We respectfully request that Ecevit Piroğlu be allowed to seek asylum in Serbia and that the extradition order made on behalf of Turkey be quashed.

Nick G.
Chairperson,
Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
June 4. 2022

Message from the International Automotive Workers' Coordination on persecution of German Communists

 

Written by: ICOG on 12 February 2022

Today we received a message from ICOG, the coordinating group of the International Automotive Workers’ Coordination, about German secret police actions against three leading members of the Marxist-Leninist Part of Germany, the MLPD. 

Last year, we issued a statement in solidarity with one of the three who was facing trumped up police charges (see here ). These charges, as the message below points out, were deemed unlawful by the courts.

Nevertheless, the German secret police, who have reduced their surveillance of German Nazis and neo-Nazis despite the latter’s assassination of Kassel Regional Governor Walter Lubcke on June 2, have switched their attentions to the MLPD because of its support for and activities with, Kurdish and Turkish communist exiles in Germany, including sending an international brigade to Syria to build a medical centre for a Kurdish community.

The International Auto Workers’ message reads:

Dear colleagues and comrades,

We have just learned of a monstrosity in the actions of the German secret service. In 2019, three leading members of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD), Gabi Fechtner, Monika Gärtner-Engel and Stefan Engel, were placed on a wanted list. Some of you surely know them personally.  They were not informed that they were wanted all over Europe, but only found out now, after their lawyers had investigated. The highlight is that all kinds of state services, police, border guards, etc. were involved, and thus the separation of secret services and police apparatus as an important outcome from the time of Hitler's fascism was taken to the point of absurdity.

(Above: Gabi Fechner at the unveiling of a Lenin statue outside the MLPD's office)

The justifications for the listing are completely far-fetched, such as "unauthorized wielding of weapons" at a demonstration or leading a meeting in violation of Corona regulations.

It becomes clear: It is about a new quality of criminalisation of the MLPD in order to contain its growing influence among the masses and, if necessary, to create false accusations to jutify banning it. This concerns all revolutionaries worldwide.

For the rulers, especially the international cooperation in the struggle against imperialism is a nightmare. One justification or the listing is therefore also the "international networking on a leadership level" with Kurdish and Turkish alleged "terrorist organizations". This threatens prison sentences of up to 5 or even 10 years in Germany.

This mendacious criminalisation must be completely withdrawn and the comrades completely rehabilitated!

The MLPD has already been able to achieve important successes through the offensive attack against this anti-communism within the framework of the movement "Don't give anti-communism a chance!". On August 3, 2021, a court declared Stefan Engel's dangerous person classification unlawful. 

International protest declarations had also contributed to this success.

Support the strike demands of the Iranian oil and gas workers

 A group of Iranian oil and gas workers have sent us the following account of their current struggle for improved wages and conditions. The workers of the world will always unite behind one another in their common struggles. We wish the Iranian workers success in their fight – eds.

The proclamation of the temporary hiring contract workers of the oil and gas refineries, petrochemical projects and power-plants

To continue and express our core economic demands, we shall enter into a nationwide strike, along with other workers across the country.

We, the workers of the temporary hiring contract, from the oil and gas refineries, petrochemical projects and other power-plant sectors, will continue our protest and strike to express against our present unbearable economic poor conditions, such as minimum unpaid wages, daily reduction of our household purchasing power and the empty promise and we demand for a better increase and higher wages and salaries, adequate social security and better living conditions. With the false pretenses and bleak promises, as we have already stated, we will continue our struggle to press our economic demands for a widespread and nation-wide strike, with our fellow workers of different public and private sectors – in front of the places of work.

We strongly demand our worker’s rights and in accordance to the previous demand, as stated in the 29 Khordad (3rd month in the Persian calendar), with our technical and project colleagues from the Farab Bid Khoon power-plants will enter and continue to support our demands for higher wages, better living conditions, twenty days of work and ten days of rest which is known as 20-10 Plan, that the workers have already left their homes and they strongly declare that unless the responsible authorities do not meet their demands, we shall not return to our power-plants and other petro-chemical projects.

The worker’s genuine protests and strikes are regarded as an alert to the responsible authorities in charge and this will continue and shall remain for a one week period and if our demands have not been met by such authorities, we will combine and participate with other cliques who are already on strike. At this week, our strike and gathering with other workers from different power plants and generations will commence in front of our places of work and we will serve to raise our voices to the public and private sectors in an attempt to declare our legitimate demands.

Our genuine and core demands and rights are as follows:

• No wages of any worker in the oil company should be less than 12, Million Toman( Iranian Currancy) and immediately there must be increase of wages in accordance to the present living conditions met with daily increases of household commodities and their purchasing power. In the same manner the wages of other workers in various sectors should be increased with the agreement of their choosing representatives. 

• The worker’s wages and salaries must be paid on time every month and any delayed in payment is regarded as crime and stealing. 

• We strongly object to the casual and temporary hiring workers contract and vehemently demand to the end of temporary contract, hands off the contractors in interfering to the working agreement, reduced working hours and all workers should have their job securities in tact with their permanent worker agreement and no worker must be fired from his or her job.

• We demand the immediate abolition of slavery workers laws and regulations which are visibly and vividly seen and practiced at the certain and specific poor economic areas that are very much an obstacle between our colleagues from various working class sectors in public and private at the national and state level in the country and on the bases of such unfair and unjust workers laws and regulations and as a result of such regulations workers are experiencing a tremendous poor working conditions and we demand the hands off and stop interfering of those greediest contractors and employers from both sectors in clear violations and abuses of our living economic conditions and we strongly ask for the implementations of job safety and security classification.

• We demand for safety and security of our working environment. Our working environment is like a bomb explosion waiting to happen – there are a number of hazards involved including: falling from high levels, air and noise pollution, and chemical inhalation. Indeed, these working conditions are highly unsuitable and far below safe working standards. There are poor hygiene and safety regulations in working places, lack of job security and unbearable difficult conditions. We become daily victims to these destructive hazards and thus, have our mental and physical health impacted. The lack of ventilation and air quality within our working environment induces high pressure and stress which affects the way we work.

• The oil companies and other petrochemical project and power plants have enough assets and capital; they must make relevant and appropriate changes to the already poor working conditions. This includes public transportation, on site clinics, toiletries and other working facilities. We the workers of the oil company are fed up with our poor working conditions that we have been made to endure and it is these conditions that prompt the need for swift rectification. We demand and have the rights to a better working and living conditions. 

• Ultimately, we support our workers from oil companies and other petrochemical and power-plants colleagues in their demands for such fair working rights and if such demands are not met by the involved and responsible authorities from state and national level, we will commence and continue our protest and strike in full-swing, on the 9th of Tir (4th month in the Persian calendar). 

• Our legitimate demands are the same demands of the oil company’s workers including the permanent workers. In addition, these colleagues on the bases of their minor pay increase in the current Year of 1400, (Iranian Calendar), as a matter of fact, it is a pure violation to their already unbearable poor living conditions. Huge taxable pressure on their salaries and the denial of the article ten and omission of various items on their already under-paid wages and salaries, have resulted in  such  core demands for continuous protest and strike.

Council of protest and striking temporary contract oil company workers 30th Khordad 1400

Ukrainian miners persist in major strike

 

Oleg Vernik,  Chairman of the All-Ukrainian Independent Trade Union "Zakhyst Pratsi" ("Labour Protection").

 

As these lines are written, 22 brave miners of the Oktyabrskaya mine in Krivoy Rog remain on strike underground.

Hundreds of their comrades from various mines — including women — have already risen to the surface. Their demands have only been partially met, but they remain committed to their struggle. New, desperate battles lie ahead, against capital and for a decent life for Ukrainian workers. For the first time in the history of our state, we are witnessing labour struggle and solidarity on this scale.

On 3 September 2020, the miners of the Krivoy Rog Iron Ore Plant (KZhRK), run jointly by the conflicting oligarchs Rinat Akhmetov and Igor Kolomoisky, did not come to the surface. The workers demanded higher wages, which the management decided to cut a few months before the protests, and better working conditions. From 8 September, the "Oktyabrskaya", "Rodina", "Ternovskaya" (formerly the "Lenin Mine"), and "Gvardeyskaya" mines were on strike. Throughout September, 393 miners stayed underground in protest. Many of them were women.

This miners' strike is unique in modern Ukraine. It is one of the first to bring together the struggles of miners and workers in other industries. In particular, railway workers from the Locomotive Depot in Krivoy Rog supported the miners' struggle with their "Italian strike". Activists from the Independent Railway Workers' Union identified technical issues in dozens of locomotives and refused to work on them. On 27 and 28 September, about 10 locomotives never left the Locomotive Depot in Krivoy Rog — a powerful demonstration of solidarity with the striking miners of KZhRK. Railway workers also took part in solidarity actions in places far from Krivoy Rog, including in Nikopol and Nizhnedniprovskiy Uzel.

The Krivoy Rog miners' protest was sparked by changes in the salary structure. The miners' wages were once paid hourly, taking into account all the time that they spent underground. Recently, wages have been tied to production, and salaries have fallen sharply: the outdated equipment in the mines fails regularly, and workers are no longer paid for repairing it. But overall working conditions also played a role. The miners say that the equipment at the mines has been in use for over 30 years, with significant detrimental impacts on their health and work environment. According to human rights defenders, a worker died in a mine at KZhRK in April 2020. A court later admitted that this was due to the poor technical condition of the equipment. Finally, the risk of losing the right to a pension added further impetus to the strikes. According to the miners, more than four thousand workers will not be eligible for preferential retirement. And Ukraine's pension reform, which was adopted several years ago, hit female miners particularly hard. Instead of a possible retirement at 45, they will have to work for at least five years longer.

Many leading Ukrainian media outlets have paid particular attention to the strikers' demand to replace the management of the Krivoy Rog Iron Ore Plant. I have already written that KZhRK is jointly owned by two competing Ukrainian oligarchs — Kolomoiskiy and Akhmetov — who have equal shares in the business. Kolomoysky formally transferred his share to another oligarch, Yaroslavsky, but experts believe that the management of KZhRK is still appointed by Kolomoysky. By focusing on the demand to replace the mine's management, many have assumed that the strikes are part of a plot by Akhmetov to gain total control over the Krivoy Rog Iron Ore Plant.

This conspiracy theory ignores the power of the mass worker protest movement that emerged. Such a movement is dangerous to the Ukrainian oligarchy at large. Here, in the face of a mass labour movement, the ruling class is consolidating; only mass organized labour can destroy Ukraine's model of oligarchic capitalism. That is why it is not the conflict between Ukrainian oligarchs that is important for us in our analysis, but the level of organisation and the activities of the democratic labour movement, embraced by independent trade unions across Ukraine.

Krivoy Rog is the birthplace of the current President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, who received record support from voters in the presidential and parliamentary elections in his hometown. The miners of Krivoy Rog had reason to count on Zelenskyi's support for their demands. However, both Zelensky and the President's office distanced themselves from the miners. And, at meetings between the striking miners and members of parliament from Zelensky's Servant of the People party, the miners were asked to express their distrust of their trade union leaders, who had initiated the strike.

Moreover, Ukrainian authorities did not take any steps to protect the striking miners from repression by the administration of the Krivoy Rog Iron Ore Plant. The administration of the KZhRK began posting personal data on the underground striking miners on social networks, and according to the information of the Ukrainian MP Mykhaylo Volynets, the apartment of one of the underground striking miners‘ apartment was burgled. "In fact, the head of the plant acted as a gunner for the 'domushniki' (burglars)," said Volynets.

"Workers who are underground feel inhuman physical and moral pressure... But there is an assumption that the president faces even more pressure from the oligarchs. I think that both owners are asking him not to interfere in the situation, because that would show that the protesters are right, and the situation will change significantly", says Vitaliy Dudin, head of the legal department of the All-Ukrainian Independent Trade Union "Zakhyst Pratsi" ("Labour Protection").

The situation is developing dynamically and every day brings news. But the fact that the Krivoy Rog miners strike has resonated around the world excites and encourages us. Every class struggle gives Ukraininan workers invaluable experience. Global workers' solidarity is no longer an abstract ideal, but a very concrete reality for workers in Ukraine. Ukrainian workers thank their comrades all over the world for their unprecedented showing of support. There are still many battles ahead for true democracy and labour rights. Thes fights have been, are, and will be international.

Oleg Vernik is Chairman of the All-Ukrainian Independent Trade Union "Zakhyst Pratsi" ("Labour Protection").

For more information on the Ukrainian miners' strikes, read this piece from Wire partner openDemocracy.

Bushfire crisis: Message of support from Germany

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 15 February 2020

On January 12, CPA (M-L) Chairperson Nick G. sent an update on the bushfire crisis to the International Coordination of Revolutionary Parties and Organisations (ICOR).  The latter organisation is currently preparing a resolution on the crisis for circulation to its 57 member groups in 45 countries.  In the meantime, we have received a message of support from the Internationalist Alliance and Environmental Union from northern Germany (see below).

 In a return message, Nick G pointed out that “The rains have helped, but in their own way, are an extreme weather event and some firefighters have now had to be switched to helping bushfire-ravaged communities deal with flooding. Fish are dying in rivers as ash from the fires is carried downstream.  Global warming is a catastrophe and the working class must lead the fight to close down the carbon economy and abandon capitalism.” 

The German message reads:

Capitalism is Destruction of our Basis of Existence

The past few days, weeks, and months have shown that a bourgeois capitalist government with a fundamentalist-Pentecostal view, on behalf of the interests of the coal monopolies, knowingly and willingly, is unable to deal with environmental issues and problems, let alone make a recognizable, relevant contribution to the unity of man and nature. Large areas in Australia still continue to burn after the rains.

It is the working class, it is the working people in Australia who fight the forces of nature, make sacrifices and help to maintain civilization progress.

On the other hand, there are the capital representatives as the cause, from whose greed for profit, human life and nature conservation are insignificant. The political reactionary developments in many countries around the world have not only led to the suppression of progressive movements and people and to a more aggressive foreign policy, but have exacerbated this development of overexploitation of nature.In a globalized world there are no isolated events, the people of Latin America experience the effects as do other peoples.

The further use of fossil or atomic sources of energy must be prevented.

The internationalist alliance, the environmental union and many, many friends and comrades support you and the fight against the polluters for a better future. 

With militant greetings,

Juergen Bader

Congratulations on 25th anniversary of the MLKP Turkey/Kurdistan

28 September 2019

Dear Comrades,

On behalf of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) please allow me to express our congratulations on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party Turkey/Kurdistan.

Founded on September 10, 1994, the creation of your Party was a timely rejoinder to neo-liberal ideologists like Francis Fukuyama who had declared “the end of history”.  History never ends, and is continuously created by the revolutionary response of the advanced human elements to the major social contradictions of the day. In our era, those elements are the proletarians and their allies among the exploited and oppressed.

Comrades, we rejoice in your victories over the Turkish fascists, all imperialists and the despicable ISIS/Daesh terrorists. You are standard-bearers in the fight for women’s emancipation.  Your women are exemplary and courageous. We also honour your slain comrades who have made the ultimate sacrifice in every field of struggle.

Comrades, we thank you for your excellent International Bulletin, and the information you provide on the struggles of the Kurdish people in defence of the Rojava revolution.

We are convinced that your struggle will be crowned with fresh success and make further contributions to the world-wide front against imperialism, fascism and capitalism.

With warm revolutionary greetings.

Nick G.
Chairperson, Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

Free Comrade Théo!

Scott C.                                                  20 August 2019

 

“Freedom for Théo: Théo El Ghozzi, worker militant, imprisoned for his ideas. On hunger strike since July 22 to demand recognition of his status as a political prisoner, his transfer to Riom Prison, and freedom for all political prisoners, particularly Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.”

 

On the 22nd of July, Comrade Théo (Théo El Ghozzi), a French Communist militant, labour activist, anti-fascist, and Yellow Vest was arrested in Nantes, France, while at work, and placed in 6 months of confinement for protesting reactionary labour laws enforced by the French State. Shortly after his arrest, Comrade Théo announced he was on hunger strike, demanding to be recognised as a political prisoner as well as to demand freedom for all political prisoners, particularly prisoner of the Palestinian struggle Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.

 

In the course of the Struggle of the Yellow Vests in France, many hundreds of activists and demonstrators have been arrested by the French State, once again proving that the Capitalist State is no friend of the worker.

 

Comrade Théo has been actively involved in the Yellow Vests’ Struggles against the French State, and in defense of worker’s rights in France, a comrade who is determined to make the ruling class tremble with fear of the masses. And in this struggle, he has faced repression in the past, back on the 23rd of June, 2016, Comrade Théo was arrested and barred from Labour activism in his hometown of  Clermont-Ferrand, where he again was on hunger Strike. Comrade Théo knows all too well the realities of Capitalist repression.

 

On the 31st of July, Comrade Théo released a letter, thanking the people of France and Comrades internationally for their support against repression.

 

Comrade Théo temporarily stopped the hunger strike on the 4th of  August due to pressure from friends concerned about his health, but resumed on the 9th of August and remains on hunger strike today.

 

Statements of solidarity have come from across France, as well as Brazil, Switzerland, Ireland, the United States, in particular Houston and Austin, Germany and Austria.

 

With our recent pledge of support for Witness K and Bernard Collaery, we cannot ignore the struggles of our comrades across the world.

 

Support Comrade Théo!

Freedom for all Revolutionary Political Prisoners!

Long Live Proletarian Internationalism!

"Hidup Buruh! Lessons for Australian Radicals from the New Generation of Indonesian Unionists"

Antonio G.                   8 May 2019

"Tell the boss to come here himself if he wants to say something. This is fucking union business, fuck off."

 

With these words a worker from the Jakarta International Container Terminal helped us push through a group of police filming our arrival at the union office inside the Jakarta port. The workers here had won the right to a union office, supplied and paid for by the multinational logistics company Hutchison, in the latest round of contract negotiations.

 

The police presence outside is permanent, and particularly sensitive to the arrival of foreigners. "We pressure this fucking multinational company from both sides," our comrade explained once we were safely upstairs, in the spacious meeting room overlooking the port. "At the container terminal our members fight on the job, and in the media we are running an anti-corruption campaign."

 

The union had recently succeeded in pressuring the government to direct the state-run anti-corruption taskforce to investigate Hutchison over their dodgy dealings with Indonesian government officials. The investigation was perhaps connected to the chief investigator of the anti-corruption body being splashed in the face with acid by an unknown assailant, leaving him blind in one eye. Our comrade discussed these events with a calm and confident tone: "We are not worried, the anti-corruption campaigns have great public support."

 

'Tenderising the bosses on the job before grilling them in the court or the paper' was a tactic described by BLF radicals in the late 70's and early 80's in Australia, and is still put to good use there by the best officials of the CFMMEU. Similarities between the tactics our Indonesian comrades apply in their struggles at the Port of Jakarta and our own experiences of union work in Australia are clues that can help to demystify the processes of accumulation that drive this latest phase of globalised capitalism.

 

An Italian comrade named Mario Tronti reminded us in the 1970's that "Thought is not needed to produce more thought, but to produce action. And action is conflictual." How can we use what here appears to be an increasingly homogenous experience of wage labour in Australia and Indonesia to build cross border organisations of workers, across multiple industries, that are capable of fighting the multinational corporations plundering both of those countries? Further investigation is required, and must take account of the unique historical circumstances that have shaped our Indonesian comrades' experience of struggle over and above obvious considerations like the continued capacity of the Indonesian ruling class to resort to more open forms of dictatorship in their repression of the workers' movement, or the complex role of political Islam in the world's largest majority Muslim country.

 

The Jakarta port union, or Serikat Pekerja Jakarta International Container Terminal (SPJICT), was established in 1999, one year after the toppling of the Suharto dictatorship. Bourgeois law in Indonesia mandates that unions are structured according to a shop or worksite-based model, similar to the system that prevails in the US. In order to extend their organising beyond the Jakarta port, the radical workers who built the SPJICT also set up the Federasi Pekerja Pelabuhan Indonesia (FPPI) in 2016, a federation now comprising 8 separate unions of dockers, seafarers, warehouse workers and nurses who work at port hospitals.

 

Our comrades in Jakarta explained that the radical politics practised by these organisations have their genesis in the dying days of the student movement against the Suharto dictatorship in the mid to late 90's. The anti-dictatorship struggle was hijacked by liberals who managed to distort the students' more radical demands into calls for a democratic pluralism that could be deployed in service of the nascent bourgeois parliamentary system - a familiar story. In the face of disillusion, many of the radical students who had been politicised by the struggle against dictatorship set about reasserting their demands for socialism upon entering the workforce, through newly constituted trade unions like the SPJICT. The real experience of organising under the open dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, as well as the harsh disillusions served up by the empty promises of liberal parliamentarism, has imbued this first generation of new Indonesian unionists with three outstanding characteristics that would be useful for Australian radicals to reflect on.

 

The first characteristic is our Jakarta comrades' realistic understanding of the limited capacity of bourgeois parliaments and elections to win and maintain radical gains for workers. The FPPI is not associated with, or affiliated to, any parliamentary party in Indonesia. During our stay in Jakarta, some representatives from the SPJICT were in fact participating in meetings involving a broad coalition of leftist forces that had come together with the goal of founding a radical socialist party. Socialist and Communist parties are still officially illegal in Indonesia, so much of the discussion revolved around neither succumbing to right opportunism (to not advance when the people are ready) nor left adventurism (to advance isolated from the people) in the extent to which the new party could openly demand socialism; right down to whether the word 'socialist' should be included in the new party's name. One comrade in particular from the SPJICT made a memorable and thoughtful contribution in his insistence that carrying out socialist work is more important than using socialist vocabulary, and the latter should be abandoned if, as the result of a period of state repression, it jeopardises the former. As that same comrade also explained, the emphasis on understanding the limits of bourgeois parliamentary politics for workers is not so that we can make a fetish out of our opposition to social democratic reformism (though its representatives often make that difficult). Rather, as the experience of our Jakarta comrades suggests, the absence of a direct association between the new Indonesian unions and any bourgeois parliamentary party means that the unions can much more easily and effectively develop an independent, class conscious workers' movement, a movement that is not distorted by either the dead-end of reformism or the superficial egoism of staffer-class, careerist politics.

 

This point relates to the second outstanding characteristic of the new Indonesian unionists: the genuine practice of solidarity that defines their methods of work, especially with regard to work within their own organisations. A corrosive but rarely discussed consequence of the almost total merger of personnel at the level of Trade Union Executive and ALP Factional Power Broker in Australia has surely been that the vulgar politics of individualism that defines the bourgeois parliamentary party has been imported into workers' organisations at almost every level. Instead of methods of work and relationships between comrades founded on a genuine and embracing sense of human solidarity, relationships that can be used as propaganda for socialism by providing a contrast to the shallow, self-serving values of capitalist culture, we see trade union leaders in Australia resorting to boasting, flattery, the pursuit of personal fame, and ridicule towards comrades in their day to day work. This is not the absence of some kind of 'real politics' within the labour movement, as has been fashionable to say, but rather the concrete presence of the politics of the bourgeois political party, which is itself a concentrated expression of the capitalist relationships of production that prevail in our society.

 

The dominance of this egoistic politics within workers' organisations has the effect of even further isolating the union leadership from its members, during a historical phase in which participation in unions is already greatly suppressed, because workers are reluctant to spend their precious time outside of work with people whom they cannot personally respect. This is not to say that there are no trade union leaders in Australia who lead by example through a genuine practice of solidarity in their work. The value of making these investigations lies in the opportunity for radicals to reflect on the processes that continue to hinder the construction of a revolutionary mass movement in Australia, and these processes are always bigger than any one individual. In this context, our movement could benefit significantly from reflecting on what allows our comrades at the Jakarta port to go about their union work with a spirit that strikes those who observe it as a living example of what human relationships could be in our glorious socialist future. How can we hope to inspire the masses back to the history-defining cause of their self-emancipation unless we uphold, through example, this kind of spirit in all of our work? Of course, we are not so naive as to believe that a few union officials being nicer to each other is all that is needed to bring about socialism in Australia. A further purpose of discussing these points is to explore the many different ways in which the parliamentary politics of the bourgeoise can disorganise the working class.

 

The third outstanding characteristic of the new Indonesian unionists is their internationalism. Comrades from the construction, transport and port unions organised an hours long meeting with us when the news arrived that unionists from a different country were visiting. They seemed to have an endless energy to discuss different experiences of work, of struggle and of strategies to beat the boss. On this point, the Sydney branch of our own MUA has done a splendid job of building cross-border organisations with comrades in the SPJICT. At the time of writing, port workers from Sydney, Jakarta and Karachi in Pakistan had organised a coordinated strike across three countries and two continents to commemorate May Day. This is exactly the kind of international organisation that our class needs if we are to stand up to the multinational corporations that are plundering the entire globe. Furthermore, in a country like Australia, where the masters and bosses have tried to use racism as a weapon to divide workers since the very beginning of European colonisation, a mass movement of the working class can be built only if we are able to foster the kind of internationalist class consciousness that defines our comrades in the SPJICT.

 

Every time workers share their experiences of work there is an opportunity to learn about our history, the shared history of the global working class. In the struggle to move from understanding history to making history, Marx's Capital is an invaluable weapon that can help us decipher the ways in which capital will subvert each of our victories to serve its expansion. A few months before our visit to the Jakarta port, the bosses at Hutchison replaced 400 union dock workers from the SPJICT with scab labourers engaged on temporary contracts.

 

The struggle to win those jobs back continues. With their thorough understanding of that other truth once identified by BLF radicals at the highpoint of their historic struggle - 'you won't get from the court what you can't hold at the gate' - our comrades in Jakarta will surely prevail.