INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY STATEMENT FROM CSP-CONLUTAS METALWORKERS TO EUROPEAN AUTOMOTIVE WORKERS

The metalworkers organized in CSP-Conlutas (People's and Union Central) express our total and unrestricted class solidarity with the workers of Volkswagen, Audi, Mercedes, MAN, Porsche and the entire European automotive industry. We stand side by side with the workers who today face mass layoffs, plant closure plans and the repression of the bourgeois State.


We vehemently condemn the greed of the large transnational corporations. They are trying to shift the crisis of capitalism and the industrial transition onto the shoulders of the working class. Destroying jobs and closing historic plants in Germany and other countries to guarantee super-profits for shareholders is a direct attack on our dignity.

We also denounce the authoritarian nature of the German police. The arrest of workers who were peacefully distributing the workers' newspaper in front of the Audi factory is an unacceptable attack on the most basic democratic and trade union freedoms. Police repression serves to shield the bosses' profits, but it will not silence the voice of those who fight.

We know that capital has no borders. The same Volkswagen or Mercedes that attacks rights in Europe repeats the recipe of exploitation and restructuring against workers in Latin America and the rest of the world. Therefore, our response must also be global: the pain of a worker in Wolfsburg or Ingolstadt is the same pain of a worker in Brazil.

In light of this, the CSP-Conlutas Metalworkers demand: 
- No job cuts: Immediate cancellation of all layoffs. 
- No factory closures: Full defense of jobs and nationalization under workers' control of plants threatened with closure. 
- End of state repression: Immediate freedom and dropping of all charges against activists and workers arrested for fighting. 
- Broad trade union freedom: Unrestricted respect for the right to strike, internal organization and free demonstration at factory gates. 
- Reduction of working hours without wage reduction: So that everyone can work and have decent jobs, countering the logic of bosses' profits.

We reaffirm the historic principle of workers' internationalism: "The unity of the working class has no borders." We will not accept that the bosses divide us by nationality or pit us against each other.

As we stated at ICOG: No struggle should stand alone. All support for your strike! 
Long live the international struggle of the working class! 
Workers of the world, unite!

In solidarity, 
National Secretariat of Metalworkers of CSP-Conlutas 
Brazil  
Luiz Carlos Prates Mancha

 

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