Revival in workers’ militancy

There are increasing signs of a world-wide revival of the class struggle. In the last issue of World Revolution we wrote about the wave of strikes that has swept across Egypt in recent months, where workers have shown a very high level of class solidarity. In May/June we have seen, among other things: Buenos Aires metro workers holding general assemblies and organising a strike against a pay deal agreed by their own union; new spontaneous walk-outs in three Airbus plants in Germany against the threatened job cuts (these follow similar strikes at Airbus France); further wildcats by Italian airport workers, Canadian transport workers, and a whole number of sectors in Zimbabwe, where workers are demanding pay rises in the face of a level of inflation that means nothing short of starvation.

Here we are publishing accounts of recent strikes by miners in Peru, written by an ICC sympathiser there, and of the air traffic controllers’ strike in Brazil, which also reveals significant developments in class consciousness. And although this strike seems to have been defeated, it is now being followed by a major wave of strikes and occupations, the biggest since 1986, involving metal workers, public sector workers, universities and other sectors. To keep up with the situation we have begun a blog on our Portuguese site (enter via https://en.internationalism.org/node/2162 ). We will do our best to keep our English language readers informed about these developments.