QUIM BOIX SPEECH IN THE PRESIDENTIAL COUNCIL OF THE FSM ROME, 14 & 15 february 2014

Comrades,

First of all, warm salutations with my desire this reunion gives plenty fruits, this is, becomes very useful for the aims of the FSM.

I consider we have done many tasks this year that we will analyze here and now. The Secretariat’s report shows so:

I am going to add some elements, mainly in four topics: our syndical battle in Europe, the reality in Spain, mi African experience and the new UIS of Pensioners and Retired Workers. 

Concerning Europe, I wish to explain clearly my worries for the insufficiencies that we cannot hide. As European, I think FSM today does not meet the needs of the class fight in this continent. It is the continent where recently hard collective fights against decisions of Capitalism have occurred, but still much uncoordinated.

In my opinion, the European Office of the FSM has not been at the height of the needs. Certainly, we have received their works and elaborations, but I consider the FSM as organization is in conditions to take a leap forward, do much more.

I propose that starting with this Presidential Council, the necessary means shall be established, and I will help as European in the part I’m concerned, to be capable of producing as FSM, at least two times a year, a document evaluating the policies enforced by the Troika and the EU against the working class in Europe, with the accomplice silence of the syndicalism accomplice with Capitalism.

These must be documents where it is clearly shown that another syndical attitude than that ruling in Europe is possible. I mean the claudicating attitude, the yellow syndicalism of CCOO and UGT in Spain and the CES, the European Confederation of Syndicates.

FSM will not grow in Europe as long as we don’t spread insistently a clear position lake that of the FSM, that shows the fight of classes in Europe may develop without social pacts and without claudicating. We need to win in Europe the fight of ideas, against reformism and the political and syndical opportunism.

With documents as proposed it will be easier to coordinate the class Syndicates in Europe.

I’m going to speak now about the Spanish State. I cannot begin without remembering with pain an absence in this reunion. Comrade Igor Urrutikoetxea is not with us. Younger than my small daughter and a fighter with whom I have shared many battles of the FSM. I wish to express my gratitude to his endeavor and my compromise to continue what he did; give publicity to the FSM in Spain, among other activities.

In the Spanish State we have only advanced in the classist syndic fight when we have coordinated the opinions of several syndicates with positions contrary to the yellowish and contrary to the social pacts. This year new affiliations to the FSM and new fights may culminate this 2014 with a new General Strike, which will show the fighting capacity of the working class. Although the yellow syndicates CCOO and UGT call for the strike only to justify their existence.

I must say that the Spanish State has helped us, and a lot, to extend the sympathies towards the FSM, the preparation and realization of the First Mundial Congress of Pensioners and Retired Workers (P&R), that I’m going to speak about: 

In the process of preparing this Congress we have done many reunions in almost all the state’s territories (we miss, Galicia, particularly) and in all we have talked more on FSM than on P&R. However, we must insist more to popularize FSM between the class syndicates of all the state.

Now it is my compromise to do it to spread the agreements of the First World Congress of Class Syndicates of P&R, the one that created the UIS nº 10 of the FSM a week ago, the first in the entire planet. Nobody other than FSM has organized the P&R in a structure capable of boosting new victories of the working class at a planetary level.

Before explaining the Congress of P&R, during this last year, I have lived two important experiencies of syndical formation work, one in Senegal and another at the Democratic Republic of Congo. Dozens of syndicalists assisted. Many syndicates  have known better the FSM from these seminaries.  are even new affiliations to the FSM thanks to these experiences. There are petitions of new courses and seminars. What I miss and propose as a duty is to create a centralized documentation in several languages that will make the work of those that may give courses about syndicalism easier.

Going back to the First foundational Congress of the UIS of P&R, linked to the FSM,  it was agreed to fight in all the planet so all the workers have the right, have they worked or not a un minimum number of years, to retire at 60 (or before, like in Bolivia where by law they may at 55 and women with 3 children or more at 49 years). But not only to retire but also have a public monetary pension that will assure living with dignity.

Of all this we have talked in the Congress of Barcelona. It has been an important congress with X delegates from Y countries that have done the effort to come here and bring their ideas to reinforce the fight of the FSM. Part of the assistants have done so as observers, and I must state that they have leaved the Congress convinced they must fight in their countries to make the FSM stronger.

The Congress, in addition to the approved documents (that you may read in the web: http://www.pensionistas.info ), has suited the new UIS with new Statutes, and a direction with Z comrades from the 5 continents.

One of the important agreements of recent Congress of the UIS of P&R has been, you will see at the final approved resolution, planning the realization before two years of the Regional Congresses, at least one for continent, capable of triggering in each planetary region the syndic battles that have been presented in the documents.

I wish to finish this speech demanding the Presidential Council as a whole, to each member of the direction of the FSM and to each syndicate affiliated to the FSM, to analyze the importance of organizing the P&R in each territory. It is not enough that as P&R they continue affiliated to the same syndicate as when they were active workers; we must succeed in them taking a step forward in the defense of their post-labor rights, rights that also need a continuous and classist syndic fight.

The leaders of capitalism are conscious that the pensions earned by the retired workers are one of the greater economic quantities moved in the planet. They wish to privatize all the pensions so they can speculate with these enormous funds. Consider that, only in the Spanish State, the quantity the pensioners’ revenue each year from public funds are now of the order of 120.000 million Euros. If we add the total for Europe or all the Planet, we see the economic importance of this right to an appropriate retirement, conquered as workers, through the syndic fight boosted by the FSM from its birth 68 years ago and thanks to the model of socialist where the right to a suiting retirement was done with only 25 years of working life.

I end by stating that the P&R, with our syndical experience, and with the data and information we count on, may be the best propagandists that must destroy capitalism, to create the socialist society in the entire planet.

Thanks, comrades.