Chile

Working class action alters political landscape

www.socialistworld.net, 07/09/2007
website of the committee for a workers' international, CWI

Mass struggles erupt

Patricio Guzmán, Socialismo Revolucionario (CWI)

More and more people in Chile are getting weary. While the politicians from the government and the opposition parties act in the service of capitalism, and while big business congratulate itself with the rapid growth of the Chilean economy, life has not improved for the mass of the workers and their families. Frustration is mounting over the contradictions facing working people, between the promises and the reality, concerning casual labour, personal debt, low wages and, now also, rising inflation.

The workers’ movement has, once again, taken up a leading position in struggle. There is still a long way to go, but at least the bosses cannot just continue to make claims about the benevolent nature of the "Chilean model" without being challenged by the exploited and the socially excluded. Pro-big business commentators speak at length about economic growth while keeping quiet about environmental destruction, the growing gap between rich and poor (the top 20% of incomes control 60% of Chilean GDP), the worsening quality of public services (e.g. education, health care, and housing). The surge in personal indebtedness of the population has grown to surreal proportions, with financial institutions giving away credit cards to students and the unemployed.

The mainstream media do not discuss people’s working conditions. 70% of the workforce labours under uncertain, casual conditions. As part of an anti-trade union strategy, and to escape collective negotiations, companies have outsourced work to subcontractors or created phantom companies. These are attempts to atomise the workforce. Workers can find their colleagues are technically employed by different company. The Chilean labour code prohibits collective negotiations over working conditions relating to the workers of two or more different companies. In these circumstances, having joint trade union negotiations or action with the workers employed by a subcontractor, is practically illegal. This leads to the situation where work colleagues employed by a subcontractor earn less and work in worse conditions than workers employed by the parent company.

Class explosions

This situation of gross inequality finally led to explosions this year. More than 5,000 workers who work for an enormous company dealing with forest exploitation - Bosques Arauco, a subdivision of Holding industrial - went on strike and won improved working conditions. They had to pay a high price for this as their struggle met with violent repression from the police. One of the workers, Rodrigo Cisternas, a 26 year old father, died after having been shot more than 100 times by the police. The Bosques Arauco strike was taken as an example and followed by subcontracted workers at the Codelco mine. These workers won the right to collective bargaining after a long and hard strike. Today, there are many such mobilisations: struggles in which workers get unionised and organised. Other sectors which are in struggle include workers from the construction industry (who work with many subcontracting workers), the banking sector, and the workers in the big export orientated agricultural sector. The latter are one of the most neglected workforces in the Chile.

On top of the immediate work-related exploitation we have to add the general crisis in housing. Millions of people are at risk of losing their social housing because they cannot afford to pay the mortgage. People have had to organise marches and demonstrations to defend their right to live and to prevent banks seizing their properties and selling it of. The subsistence fisher men, who are suffering from industrial trawling fleet competition, have had to organise demonstrations and face down police repression to get some emergency aid from the government. The indigenous people are still the most poor and exploited of the country. The Mapuches are struggling to recuperate their ancestral lands that have been fraudulently seized from them. They face severe repression and the state has used anti-terrorism laws against them. Some of the Mapuche people were given 10 year prison sentences for burning fields and many regularly face imprisoned on the basis of made up charges. At the time of writing, two Mapuche women are on hunger strike in prison, in an attempt to highlight their plight.

We also have seen the mobilisation of workers and youth who live in Santiago de Chile, the capital city, of 6 million inhabitants. They are protesting against the consequences of the huge ’restructuring’ of public transport, called the Transantiago. The government conceded that Transantiago was a disaster, causing increased waiting times, delays on routes and the disappearance of a whole routes. At the same time, we have seen the announcements of more profits for the banks and companies involved in the contracts for Transantiago.

Union leaders forced to act

No surprise then that the trade union federation, CUT (Central Unitaria de Trabajadores), whose main leaders are also leading members of the government parties of the Concertación government (the ex-social democracy ’Partido Socialista’ and the Christian democrats of ’Democracia Cristiana’) or of the Communist Party (PC) which is now involved in negotiating a pact with the Concertación parties, were forced into calling a national day of mobilisations, on the 29 August, because of the pressure of the rank and file union members. Although the slogans for the demonstration were very general, like "Against neo-liberalism", "For a social state and solidarity" or "Put an end to exclusion" (this last slogan is aimed at demanding a change of the law that would allow the PC to enter parliament). Many social organisations, including some sections of the trade union movement, pushed to make the demands more concrete and precise. Issues were raised: against the hike in bread prices, against the rises of food staples, for higher wages, for better working conditions, for public transport…all of these demands were carried on placards and on banners during the demonstration by the different local organisations and community organisations.

It is not the first time the CUT took the initiative for such a mobilisation. In the past, these have been more of a rallying of forces without any direction or intention to take the struggle forward. The role of the CUT in this mobilisation was not any different. There was no meeting or rally and the participants did not receive clear instructions or a clear plan of what was going to happen on the day. The General Secretary of the CUT, Martinez, said "Every member can do what he or she thinks is best".

But if it was the intention of the CUT leadership to have a little walk around Santiago without any real consequences, they were mistaken. The mobilisation was used by working people to express their frustration. The government tried to ban the demonstration but thousands of people were determined to march. The police attacked the protest and there were stand-offs with the militarised police and riots. 750 people were arrested. The police violence was shown on the television. Footage showed an unprovoked police attack against around 100 people who were queuing for a bus. A member of parliament was hit on the head, and suffered a fractured skull, while he was chatting with a police official in charge.

2006 school students’ occupations

Last year, when 600,000 secondary school students occupied schools, marked a turning point. Chile has changed. The way in which workers have now entered the struggle confirms this. A new generation, free of the trauma of 1973, when the elected left government of Salvador Allende was bloodily overthrown, and followed by long years of Pinochet dictatorship, is now on the move and reconstructing the trade union organisations and the social organisations. They are giving these mass organistions a strong sense of democracy from below and instilling a distrust of the traditional political parties.

New perspectives have opened up for Chile. Recent events are promising for the struggle to build democratic trade unions, with leadership independent of capitalist state power, and for the construction of a new workers’ party with a socialist, democratic and fighting programme.

The workers, poor and youth have learned one elemental lesson: a lesson that appeared to have been forgotten. A collective solution is possible and is the only solution open to the mass of the workers. To bring it about we have to organise and struggle.