Issue #1498      20 April 2011

Open, democratic, class-oriented, internationalist

The 16th World Trade Union Congress of the World federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was concluded with the election of the President and the Presidential Council. Brother Muhammad Shaaban Azzouz was re-elected in the position of the President for the next five years. Moreover, an electoral procedure took place for the voting of the Presidential Council where 598 representatives and 213 observers (advisory vote) voted for the new Presidential Council.

“We had nothing to fear, and this is why we managed to organise an open, democratic Congress.” WFTU General Secretary George Mavrikos made clear that the WFTU has to make more progress regarding its work in the sectors, for women, for young workers, with the progressive artists. With collectivity and internal democracy in the lines of WFTU we have to construct a front against bureaucracy and opportunism.

“We have two enemies to face in our struggles: the employers and the leadership of the compromised and sold-out trade unions who both aim to the dissolution of the class-oriented trade union movement. Internationalism must be strengthened and so does labour solidarity in an organisation that has to ensure the unity in its base, the social alliance of the workers, the self-employed, the indigenous, the unemployed, poor farmers. All this has to target the radicalisation of their consciousness and their evacuation from ephemeral struggles.

“The central target of our struggle should be the contemporary needs of working families, the environmental problems, health and security, the major drug problem, the mass media that manipulates consciousness, the ensuring of democratic rights.

“Solidarity to the working class of all countries, to those who struggle for the life and the rights, for the abolition of exploitation, to all of those who struggle we are standing on their side. You should know that this struggle will be a victorious struggle.”

The Congress ended with the “International”.  

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