Cuba, PC meeting of the WFTU, May 2,017
Comrades.
First of all, thank you on behalf of the WFTU P&Rs, and especially the leadership of our UIS, to have been invited to this important meeting. The WFTU will always be able to count on the contribution of the experience and veteranism of the trade unionists who for decades have been defending trade unionism against the exploiting bourgeoisie and its collaborators, the trade unions which are in league with the bosses.
In second place, we’d like to explain very briefly the reality of the Spanish state. On one hand, businessmen pay only 50% of the taxesof what they paid 10 years ago, and the working class has witnessed a huge increase of their contribution to the States General Budget. On the other hand, the historic CCOO union, called by fascism "the communist union", continues to consolidate its transformation into a union in league with the bosses. By the end of June it will hold its 11th Congress in which they will reaffirm the Social Pact as the basis of its existence; it will continue to disarm ideologically its affiliates, and will appoint a young bureaucrat (who has never been elected as the representative of the workers in any company) as the new Secretary General. To change this reality the WFTU has, in the Spanish state, 11 affiliated unions which at the moment do not coordinate our struggles in any way. So much so that it was not even possible to coordinate the celebration of 70 years of WFTU, despite the special trip to Madrid, made by George Mavrikos in April 2,015.
But let's work to change this reality.
Concerning the P&R, there are two important things that this Presidential Council must know:
1) There are more important struggles of the P&R every day, and increasingly in more countries in the planet. Most recently, Chile (with millions of P&R on the streets against private pension funds), Brazil (with a large general strike to curb the deterioration of public pensions proposed by the corrupt Temer), Argentina (with 25 years of struggle every Wednesdays before its Parliament), Spain (with great mobilizations every two months), Italy (with the creation of the P&R organization of the USB syndicate), and a long etc.
2) That our TUI of P&R of the WFTU continues strengthening. Because of that reason has suffered the attack of our class enemy, that blocked our webpage for several weeks, but we have already recovered it and we are also complying with what we announced at the 17th Congress of the WFTU: we have already successfully celebrated the Conferences of America, Europe, Africa and Asia-Oceania of P&R class organizations. On 26th October in Tunisia, we will be holding, with your help as the WFTU leadership, the only Regional Conference that is still pending to complete the structuring of all the leading teams of our UIS, the First Conference of Arab Countries.
To complete this intervention, we want to contribute some ideas that we consider useful for the work of the leadership of the WFTU:
1) Our self-criticism for not having proposed a resolution of the 17th Congress of the WFTU that summed up the reality of the important struggles of the Pensioners and Retirees throughout the planet.
2) The importance of continuing the annual meetings of those responsible for the nowadays 10 existing UIS of the WFTU.
3) The proposal to continue calling for International Days of struggle by the direction of the WFTU or by the direction of the UIS (our UIS, every October 1st, as we did for the first time and successfully in 2016, is going to take to the streets the demands of the P&R in the 5 continents of the planet).
4) To request the actual implementation of all the regional offices of the WSF, as some almost do not work or have a sole testimonial role. As European and Spanish, I call on the European Office, which is currently based in Cyprus, to act as a promoter of activities capable of curbing the presence of capitalists-allied trade unionism, which, financed by our class enemy, carries out the ETUC in Europe, following the guidelines of the ITUC. An example of this non-functioning of the WFTU European Regional Office is that, from Denmark, active trade unionists have recently asked for help from our UIS, against the great Social Pact that the capitalist-allied unions are preparing there, when, of course, they would ask the European Regional Office if it had a minimum activity.
5) Continue to internationally disseminate views of WSF to help the working class to understand the reality of the class struggle today, opinions that help to extend the agreements of the 17th Congress of the WFTU. Our UIS has contributed several documents in this direction that are available to you on our website (some you will find in up to 9 languages, such as the one referring to the aid to the expansion of fascism that indirectly does capitalists-aligned trade unionism).
6) To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, we propose to make an inventory of the achievements that the existence of the Socialist Countries represented for the working class and compare them with the existing labor rights in the capitalist countries.
7) Ask all class unions to demand in their respective countries that the time that any worker is unemployed computes to him as quoted to the Social Security, so much for his future pension as for the rest of benefits.
I believe that these proposals can be added to the topics discussed in this Presidential Council.
We remain, like UIS, at the disposal of all WFTU unions to structure the country-to-country organizations of the P&R (as we will do in Italy on May the 20th), so that, with them, the struggles of the Pensioners and Retirees of the entire planet (we are the 20% of the world population and 30% of the people with the right to vote), will increase, in order to coordinate and achieve the successes that the working class deserves.
I conclude by informing that we are beginning to design the Second Congress of the class organizations of the P&R, that is to say, the Second Congress of our UIS, that will be summoned for the beginning of the year 2,019.
Quim Boix
General Secretary of TUI of Pensioners and Retirees (P&R) of WFTU
