Great workers' and popular mobilization in the general strike of September 15

The Pit-CNT general strike was 24 hours in the construction, meat packing plants, public and private banks, in all branches of education and municipalities of Montevideo, and partial or with union guard in the other unions and had a good compliance, but the most remarkable thing is that there was a large mobilization of more than 30,000 workers on Libertador Avenue.

For many years we have not seen such a massive concentration in a Pit-Cnt strike, with the participation of dozens of riders on horseback representing farm workers and settlers, as well as housing cooperative workers, students and retirees. There were delegations from all the departments of the country.

This strike and the mobilization made its way facing the permanent delays of the opportunist majority of the leadership of the Pit-CNT, and at the impulse of the Coordination of Unions, which groups together not only public and private unions but also minority classist groupings. Coordination that has the support of our Corriente Sindical Clasista, which proposed to turn this mobilization into a demonstration against the policy of adjustment and reduction of salaries and pensions of the government of the right and ultra-right.

At this moment, the annual budget is under discussion in the Senate and has just been approved in the Chamber of Deputies with almost zero expenditure, and without proposing the wage recovery of the 5% lost in 2020. It also comes with a removal of funds of 20 million dollars for purchases of INC lands (colonization) affecting the current colonists and thousands of aspirants. It deepens privatizations and the downsizing of public enterprises, worsens the situation of public health and education and keeps public investment in public housing and infrastructure, vital for the creation of new jobs, very low.

On the other hand, the 9th Round of the Wage Councils is underway, where the agreements for wages and working conditions of the private sector are made, the guidelines given by the government do not recover what was lost in 2020, 4%, and the business chambers are closed against the wage recovery, the adjustment for inflation and also propose income wages for 70% of the award and other barbarities.

In view of this situation and with the important drop in the number of contagions and deaths due to Covid-19, in the months of July and August there were very important sectoral mobilizations and it was necessary to unify the struggles to try to bend the arm of the government, which intends to make the workers and the people pay the cost of the economic crisis, strengthened by the pandemic. This government has also handed over the container traffic of the port of Montevideo, until 2081, to the Belgian monopoly Katoen-Natie and is promoting the FTA with China, which would imply a new blow to the national industry.

The mobilization of 15-S was also stimulated by the conquest of 800,000 signatures for the Referendum against the LUC (law of urgent consideration) which is expected to be called for March of next year.

Now the struggle within the workers' movement is so that this mobilization does not remain as a luxury burial of the struggle as opportunism proposes, but that it be extended and deepened.

Editorial office of La Verdad

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)