Brazil: CSP - Conlutas elected its new driving
At the meeting in San Pablo, We interviewed one of the leaders of the National Coordination CSP-Conlutas. Silvia Leticia is a teacher, general coordinator of the Union of Education Workers in the State of Pará (SINTEPP - BETHLEHEM / PA), New National Executive Secretariat (ITS) CSP Conlutas and leader of Socialist Struggle To Fight States.
Silvia, Tell us how it came and what has CONLUTAS insertion in the labor movement Brasileiro?
SL: The Central Trade Union and Popular CONLUTAS born of a political and union break with the CUT (Central Workers) driven primarily by the political organization of former President Lula. A assuming in 2003 the Presidency of the Republic, Lula and the PT began to implement fiscal adjustment measures to benefit the bankers and agribusiness, attacking the rights of workers. One of these measures was the pension reform that ended income equality between public workers and retirees in the same sector. CUT addition to supporting this attack on the rights of civil servants, He also supported to job security in this sector. To address this situation, since the CUT refused to mobilize, several unions and federations organized the National Forum Struggles against the reforms of the government of the PT. The organization of this forum was extended to all Brazilian states and hence arose the National Coordination of Struggles (Conlutas). In 2010, CSP arose Conlutas (Central Trade Union and People).
In its first years of existence, CSP-Conlutas was a very attractive center for nuclear and organize combative and anti-bureaucratic unionism Brazilian, since its inception sought not only to organize public employee unions, but also it took the initiative in the private sector, union opposition, minorities in union meetings, and also movements against oppression and youth. However due to the policy direction (PSTU / LIT) to impose an antidemocratic political orientation in recent years has caused the Central paralyze, lose and make mistakes initiatives important as in the last fight against pension reform of the government of Bolsonaro.
What is your assessment of the last congress and coordination meeting just concluded?
SL: The loss of political opportunities and critical balance that several unions made the direction of the CSP-Conlutas in the last Congress were focused precisely on how bad it was the way that the direction of the center took to address the fight against reform Bolsonaro retirements. Instead of prioritizing grassroots organizing in each sector, with a strong complaint to the government explaining that if we were to fight could defeat the government, our headquarters was carried away by the organization, from the CUT, forum of trade unions, whose main objective was to make amendments to the draft government in Congress. This bureaucratic politics led the government to approve pension reform in Congress without even a street protest and general strike on the day of voting.
Nevertheless, attributed only to the majority address CSP - Conlutas (PSTU) all this disarmament would be a big mistake. As well as in much of the world left, inside the center entire defeatist organized political current, which led by political and union grouping Resistência (rupture of the PSTU) helped little to address this policy of the central. This current has the analysis that there is a conservative wave in the world, Bolsonaro the government is Bonapartist and that his victory was a change in the Brazilian political situation unfavorable to the struggle of workers, which it is a big mistake. This skeptical and defeatist line sector is the complete abandonment of the dispute directions in the mass movement in the country, its central orientation is building united fronts with the union bureaucracy. It happens that the union bureaucracy in our country, like all union bureaucracies of the world, not to mobilize workers, feeds the illusion in the mass movement that in presidential elections 2020 will return to the command of the country through the former. President Lula, and in the case of legal impediment, someone to defend their interests in trade union bureaucracy.
Thus, bureaucratic hegemony and defeatist skepticism have become faces of the same coin, This opened up a huge crisis dispute the small apparatus of CSP - Conlutas, generating that sectors not aligned with these two streams move away. At the last congress of the central significant political resolutions they were voted as such: the fight against the government fiscal adjustment, the denunciation of the enormous social crisis affecting our country, denouncing corruption, support for the struggles of indigenous peoples and traditional populations and protection of the environment, women, black, Largrbtःi. construction was also voted a national meeting of the working class for 2020 to organize the struggle against the government and employers.
Nevertheless, so far these measures have been a salute to the flag, because we are paralyzed without political campaigns, this amid major strikes like oil workers, It announced the arrest of postal and national education for March. We do not have posters, brochures or an agenda for assemblies in the sectors that help drive this calendar with great force. The meeting of the National Coordination of the Central that took place between the 14 and the 16 February, It was the minor scale reproduction of this dispute, reaffirmed virtually all resolutions adopted at the last Congress of the CSP - Conlutas, but we are still paralyzed politically and lack of initiatives.
Your Chapa became the second force of the Central, that this growth is due?
SL: Based on these criticisms, union tendency of which I am part, STATES TO FIGHT, which it is organized by activists of Socialist Luta / PSOL and independent labor activists, He defined to the proposal to build an independent political and union pole to the hegemony of the PSTU and also defeatism and skepticism of the current Resistance. Our proposal was to build an alternative internal address in the management bodies of Central and joined the same peers / as three other organizations: Esquerda Socialist Movement (MY), Freedom and People's Revolution (LRP) y Action Socialist Popular (APS), all political organizations of the PSOL. We were the second most voted list among the four (4) which they were presented, thus becoming the second political force of the center. Socialist struggle / Pra Lutar States will double its presence by the Executive Secretary CSP National Conlutas. We will battle together with colleagues who make up the CSP list - Conlutas autonomous and democratic so that it is in fact an active political pole of intervention in the class struggle, looking in all areas energize and strengthen Central as an alternative direction for the Brazilian trade union movement.
What are the proposals of States to fight for Conlutas and in the labor dispute MO?
SL: First, build a broad mobilization process, unification of struggles in perspective of a general strike against the government of Bolsonaro / Mourao. Against fiscal adjustment measures, a general increase in wages, reducing working hours without reducing wages (work less for everyone to work), National salary floor DIEESE (1) for all categories of workers / as, Freeze electricity rates, phones, Water, urban transport, internet, products of the basic food basket, etc. Second, we want to help organize a great national meeting of the working class that allows unify from the bases of each of the sectors of Brazilian workers, the city and the countryside, with the prospect of building a unified plan of struggle and a program that puts the country's break with imperialism, the IMF and service workers and the poor.
(1) DIEESE - Interunion Department of Statistics and Socioeconomic Studies, It is a body responsible for assisting the Brazilian labor and social movement in wage campaigns unlike official government agencies.
