BRAZIL
Written by PSTU – Brasil
Wednesday, 13 May 2015 19:27
The Brazilian working class started fighting for their rights on the National Day of Strikes and Demonstrations, on April 15. It was a strong day of struggle, with significant stoppages in several workers sectors throughout the country, especially in the manufacturing industry and transport. They also added up to many strikes of high school teachers across the country and highways blocking by the popular movement.
The demonstration of strength of the working class increased the division between the bourgeoisie and forced Eduardo Cunha, the pro-employer, conservative, right-wing, corrupt and homophobic Speaker of the House of Representatives to postpone the voting of the Bill 4330, which allows the complete outsourcing in industrial and service sectors. The plain text of the Bill 4330 was approved in the House of Representatives on April 8, but it still has to be approved in the Senate.
The working class has the power to defeat this bill and also the Provisional Acts 664 and 665 as well as Dilma’s fiscal adjustment which cuts working class rights and social funds to transfer the money to the bankers and great entrepreneurs.
It is necessary and possible to build the general strike as it has been shown in the mood for fighting on this April 15th and in the hundreds of strikes occurring throughout Brazil.
Therefore it is necessary to demand the trade union centers, especially the CUT, along with the CSP-Conlutas, to continue this unified front of the working class and build the general strike to overthrow this bill and the Provisional Acts of the government. It’s no time to negotiate withdrawal of rights. It’s no time to make amendments to the bill, hoping to “improve” it. It must be wholly defeated
In that sense, the PSOL makes a mistake when its Representatives present amendments to this bill, as they inform on its website: “The PSOL bench in the House of Representatives presented an amendment to the Bill 4330/2004, the ‘Outsourcing Bill’, aiming at reducing the damage caused by its approval.”
The fight against this Bill must be waged essentially on the streets, in the strikes. We are not going to defeat it in discussions in Congress, proposing mere amendments to it. We want nothing less than its filing. The parliamentary strategy of presenting amendments in Congress is the path of defeat.
The winning way is building the general strike, which has to face, in addition to the Congress, the employer institutions and the Dilma’s government (PT).
The right-wing demonstrations in March and April
The right-wing demonstrations on April 12th were again composed mostly of the middle class and the rich. They had as a primary goal the protest against corruption and the government. They were also much smaller than those on March 15th. The PSDB, DEM, PPS, and other right-wing parties, seek to capitalize and lead the middle class sectors are expressing their outrage in the streets.
As on March 15th, a part of that middle class is very conservative, the other part is simply outraged and trying to avoid their economic decline. The explicit adherence of the PSDB to the call of the latest demonstration is perhaps one of the causes of its significant reduction. It declined so much that the liberal groups on the right that summon them left the demonstrations clearly disappointed and gave up on carrying out new mass demonstrations. They will try to lobby in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil and home to the Congress.
The working class in action, unified and in opposition to Dilma’s administration can bring a large share of this discontent middle class behind it.
No more Dilma, PT, PMDB or PSDB!
The working class, including the manufacturing workers, is in its vast majority in opposition to the government. It is sufficient to notice that 63% advocate the impeachment of the president without even knowing that the vice president Michel Temer (PMDB), would take office instead of new presidential elections, which is their desire. In other words, they want this government to leave. A class alternative to this government can only be built in the independent mobilization of the workers, defeating in the streets this pro-employers and corrupt government of coalition with the bourgeoisie.
On April 15 the workers began to enter into a battlefield fighting against the attacks they have been suffering under Dilma’s government, under the Congress, under the PMDB as well as under the bourgeois opposition, the PSDB and the others. When it’s necessary to make the workers pay for the crisis, to make the fiscal adjustment, they all play together.
It is necessary to unite the trade union centers and the social movements to build a general strike against the outsourcing bill and the Provisional Acts of the government. To fight coherently the fiscal adjustment, however, we must also face Dilma’s government. And to build a left-wing alternative of the working class it is necessary to clearly oppose this government.
In this sense, we continue making a call to the CUT and the MST (Movement of Landless People) to split with the government. Also to the MTST (Movement of Homeless Workers), which is mistaken by merely making a call to struggle “for rights against the right”, as if the Dilma’s government was not responsible for the fiscal adjustment policy.
To defeat the “right” we have to defeat the PT administration allied to the PMDB, and the PSDB. We also have to point out an alternative of class independence, of struggle and of proletarian democracy.
We must unite to fight the Provisional Acts of the government and the Bill 4330. This is our immediate task. Therefore we say: let’s together build the General Strike.