International Labour Network of Solidarity and Struggle
Connexions Directory of Groups & Websites 2023

Website: https://www.facebook.com/InternationalLabourSolidarity/

Purpose: Intended for all trade union organisations that see themselves as part of a type of unionism that focuses on struggles, worker democracy, self-organisation of workers, and the need for social change.

The effects linked to the capitalist system's crisis are felt throughout the world. The economic, financial, environmental and social crises are interconnected and self-reinforcing. The current economic crisis of capitalism highlights the impasse of a development model that is grounded on an increasingly unequal distribution of generated wealth, on financial deregulation, on generalised free trade and on environmental contempt.

We want to share our experiences, learn from each other's struggles and victories, build unity across our national borders, and turn international worker solidarity into a reality. Faced with the current crisis and its effects on the populations of all countries, and for which capitalism is responsible, it is necessary to coordinate and unite our struggles. We ask all trade union collectives to join us in the struggle to build this trade union unity of action, essential if we are to effectively combat social decline, conquer new rights, and establish a different society.

Our struggle does not seek a return to the past; attacks against the working class are albeit very strong and sometimes take on new forms. However, capitalist exploitation is not new and it is capitalist exploitation that we must break away from, if we are to come up with new methods of organising society that respond to the peoples' needs.

We build this approach on a step by step basis, in collaboration with all union organisations that are struggling, and for whom the capitalist system does not represent an unsurpassable mode of
organisation of our societies, and who build change through day-to-day collective struggles and discussions on the desired future society.

To secure shareholders' and employers' profits, to protect the banking sector, international institutions (World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organisation, etc.), governments and employers are increasingly targeting workers# rights.

The current economic and political system organises the plundering of many countries, forcing millions of people to abandon their home regions in order to survive and then denies them of their rights on the grounds of their immigrant status.

The dismantlement of public services, the calling into question of all social rights, the attacks against trade union rights, the violation of trade union freedoms, the growth of precariousness and unemployment in order to put pressure on populations. These same methods are used in all countries!

In order to attain their objectives, similar methods are employed: criminalisation, trials, arrests, police actions, military occupations, various obstacles that constrain collective and individual rights. Repression is one of their weapons against those who resist, who rise up, who promote alternatives. Our solidarity, which transcends national borders, is one of our responses.

The trade unionism that we want to build cannot be in support of deals with the powers in place and endorse antisocial policies. The trade union movement has the duty to mobilise resistance at the international level, in order to enact, through struggles, the needed social transformation.

Our trade unionism aims to overturn the existing economic, social and political development model, based on the supremacy of finance, profit and competitiveness. On the contrary, we want to build a system that is grounded on common goods, on the redistribution of wealth among those who contributed to its creation, on the rights of workers and on an environmentally sustainable development.

We call for the extension, democratisation and social appropriation of public services (education, healthcare, transport, energy, water supply and sanitation, housing, etc.). Our shared objectives also include the free flow of peoples and equality of social and political rights for all, regardless of their nationality, origin or gender.

Our trade unionism combines the protection of workers# immediate interests, and a desire for meaningful social change. It does not restrict itself to the economic sphere but includes issues like the right to housing, to land, gender equality, antiracism, environmentalism, anticolonialism, etc.

The interests that we defend are those of the working class (active or retired, unemployed, youth workers). They are linked to those of peoples coming from all regions of the globe. We are therefore opposed to the employers, as well as governments and institutions that serve employers' interests, and we are autonomous from all political organisations.

International trade union organisations do exist; these union networks were created on professional and geographical grounds. From one region of the globe to the next, our trade union histories, our union structures, our union affiliations, are different. However, we all have one vital thing in common: we are all determined to strive towards the coordination of a more combative style of trade union activism at the international level.

We do not call for the establishment of a new international trade union organisation. We choose to strengthen, broaden, and render more efficient, an trade union network that is combative, democratic, autonomous, alternative, feminist and internationalist.

Geographic Scope: International


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