KPML: Good Commitment to 1 May

In Oslo, it was brilliant morning of 1 May. About 8500 were gathered at the Young Market, which is one of the best showings ever. KPml was present and handed out our magazine, both on and off the Youngstorget Grünerløkka solidarity event in Birkelunden earlier in the morning.

Special pensions were naturally the focus of the union’s slogans this year. Postkom highlighted strong opposition to EU 3 postal directive, a directive that paves the way for full liberalization and threatened einskapsporto in Norway. From the slogans, it is clear that the services directive is considered as the biggest threat to the academic rights today and it will open up even more social rollbacks. This is in contrast to the so called “guarantee” from Stoltenberg, who simply can not guarantee what the EU and the EFTA Court will add to the service directive.

In the international section, the Tamils​was by far the largest group, about 2000! Many Europeans also supported the slogans of their national rights and the genocide that the Sri Lankan government now finally leads. The same was the case with slogans against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

KPml handed out its free magazine in several places in the country, and the impression is that the audience around 1 May was good not only in Oslo.

UJC Madrid: May 1, Youth Respond to the Crisis of Capital

We are the first generation that will live worse than the one before. Currently, youth unemployment exceeds 43%. Almost half of young people cannot work when we leave the school and thus, it complicates the possibility of emancipation and subsistence in society.

Want to live in your parents until age 50? You think it’s more important to party, buy an iPhone or a Playstation then to fight for your future?

In addition, higher retirement age further complicates the ability to find work. While young people are unemployed, the elderly have to work longer. How do you intend to work more years if we don’t find work? And besides, we must add our job insecurity (grant contracts, temporary, training, etc …) that has facilitated the dismissal of many of us (and the threat of dismissal to those who still have a job) by employers (los Botín, Florentino Pérez, Entrecanales, Amancio Ortega, González, etc, the biggest culprit in the crisis) to sustain their huge profits and exploitation of labor in this time of crisis, in unsustainable conditions, young people, to compete for control the market and, therefore, to obtain the maximum benefit, have gained a lot of money speculating, when the economy was doing well and still winning it in the crisis.

There are possible solutions to the crisis that will not make our living and working conditions worse as public employees, end with garbage contracts and the Plan Bolonia, etc. But do you favor business? The answer is no. Entrepreneurs do not accept and will not accept progressive measures for improving the working and living conditions of workers because it undermines their private profits and makes them less able to control competition for the market, which props up capitalism itself.

They have demonstrated this over the years with all the labor reforms, including the last, and the recent Pension Reform. Through the various governments and purchased major trade unions they have been removing all social progress and struggles of their workers.

Who are the majority in society? Workers or employers? Why is the crisis more beneficial for the employer and the employee must pay? So in this “wonderful” democratic capitalism have all that we preach, or less?

It is necessary to build a different type of society to ensure economic survival and the decision-making ability of the worker, young or old. All young people, students and workers, we must fight for our future. In a future where working and living conditions of the poor are not precarious like the nineteenth century. A society that is more just, equitable and democratic for workers is outside the foundations of capitalism.

Do not stay at home. Fight for your future wherever you are: in your school, your neighborhood, from a union struggle at work, etc. Do not let your boss and the State squeeze you out of being young and hard-working. Your future is at stake. Defend your work and social rights.

Organize and fight! 

FIGHTING YOUTH COORDINATOR.

JCE-ML, CJC, UJC-Madrid.