Belgian workers take on the Martens-Gol government TO EVERYONE'S surprise, after four years of an extremely harsh austerity policy that has cost workers 13 per cent of their purchasing power, the rightist government led by Wilfried Martens and Jean Gol - a coalition of Christian democrats and liberals - emerged the winner in the legislative elections of October 13, 1985. The four parties of the governmental coalition together advanced by 2.2 per cent and gained two seats. (1)
This was a political defeat for the workers' movement and, especially, a new setback for the leadership of the Confederation of Belgian Workers [FGTB - Federation generale du travail de Belgique], which has Socialist Party (SP) politics. This leadership has not succeeded in changing the government's policies through extra- parliamentary mobilizations, and well. FRANK SLEGERS In fact, the FGTB leadership has supported the plan of the two socialist parties, the Flemish (SP) and the Francophone (PS). The scheme was to "nibble away" at the Christian democracy by opening their election lists to Christian activists and, in the case of the PS, to militants of the Walloon movement. The goal was to take the liberals place in the governmental coalition with the Christian Democratic parties, in order to continue the austerity policy at the expense of the workers.
The GTB leadership gave its blessing to this project. The Walloon interregional council of the FGTB had even entered into a common program with the PS based on this view. And in order not to impede the return of the PS to the government, the FTB leadership "froze" any workers' struggles for a year and a half. It might be expected that once the Martens-Gol government had won in the elections, it would feel stronger and would step up its attacks on the workers. But, paradoxically, this has not happened. The government, and especially its prime minister, the Flemish Christian Democrat Wilfried Martens, has gone on a campaign announcing that after the sacrifices will come thebenefits. Martens had declared in particular in September 1985 that, "we have traveled its electoral strategy has failed as three-quarters of the way." There was light at the end of the tunnel. The Christian trade-union confederation [CSC - Confederation des syndicats chretiens], which is linked to the Christian Democratic parties, followed suit, demanding that the future government build on the results of the previous government to fight unemployment, maintain purchasing power, safeguard social security and so on.
Brandishing these demands the Christian trade union waged an unparalleled campaign for the candidates on the Christian Democratic lists who directly represented the Christian workers' movement. It seems that this message was heard by the electorate, since, although the governmental coalition advanced as a whole, its parts advanced unequally. The Christian Democrats throughout the country and the Francophone liberals advanced, but the Flemish liberals suffered a major setback. The latter party is the one most closely identified with austerity.
The weight of the Christian
1. The four parties of the governmental coalition are the Social Christian Party (PSC - Parti social chretien) and its Flemish equivalent, the CVP, which belong to the Christian Democratic tendency, and the Liberal Reform Party (PRL - Parti reformateur liberal), which is Francophone, and its Flemish equivalent, the PVV. International Viewpoint 14 July 1986
workers' movement in the new government is therefore greater and, at the same time, the pressure on the leadership of this movement from its own rank and file has increased. And, in the meanwhile, looming on the horizon are the "social elections" of 1987, the elections in the workplaces that measure the relationship of forces between the two large trade-union confederations.
Furthermore, the two socialist parties have advanced by 3.3 per cent and by six seats during these elections. The small parties, especially the linguistic community parties, were the losers in the October 13, 1985, elections. Immediately after the elections the general feeling in the factories was not one of defeat, but of annoyance with the "imbeciles" who let themselves be fooled into voting for the promises of the Christian Democrats.
The weakness of the new government was not long in appearing. Although it was, in principle, a continuation of the preceding government, the negotiations leading to its formation took a long time, above all because of the frictions between the liberals and the Christian Democrats. The employers moved onto the front lines in the battle to influence these positions, for example by disputing the idea that three. quarters of the course had been run.
At the end of November 1985, a governmental agreement was reached that in the next four years the budget deficit should drop from 11.5% to 7% of the gross national product. The main push would be made in 1986 and 1987, getting big savings by holding down wages, reforming social-security and dismantling social services.
However, the agreement did not include specific provisions. In order to make it concrete, more negotiations were necessary within the government. Its first step was to ask parliament for special powers "to take any measures necessary any time that exceptional circumstances jeopardized competitiveness" and to put public finances "in order." The special powers were voted at the end of March 1986, but not until May, eight months after the election, was the government able to give concrete form to an austerity plan that would pass the cost of the crisis on to the workers.
While taking the time necessary to reach internal agreement, the government was counting on the unions taking a wait-and-see attitude. The unions did not disappoint it.
In fact, on December 3, 1985, when the leaderships of the two confederations each discussed govern-
International Viewpoint 14 July 1986 mental agreement, the attitude of wait-and-see set in. The CSC did not reject the agreement out of hand but asked for negotiations. Its newspaper commented: "The train is the party; the drivers are well-known: the MOC [Movement ouvrier chretien - Christian Workers' Movement] is happy that its representatives in the government and in parliament have been reinforced, thanks to the elections. It is counting on its representatives to push its opinion on the travel plans, wherever necessary; the Christian workers' movement will continue to watch out that the policy indispensible for recovery should not lose its equally indispensible human face." Refusal to lead a general offensive
As for the FGTB, it rejected the governmental agreement but announced: "We are not going to move for the moment, we will wait until the unpopular economic measures amounting to about 225 thousand million francs (about 5 million US dollars) begin to come out. Until the social-service welfare recipients and the workers have lost their 2% by the index, until those who have opted for early retirement see that they must pay 40,000 francs (889 US dollars) more in taxes, until households see their unemployment benefits diminish. In short, until the bad intentions of this government come out into the open." The FGTB therefore refused to open up a general offensive against the government.
In industry, the workers showed throughout this period a largely intact capacity to resist. As early as November 1985, a few weeks after the elections, the Limbourg miners had gone on strike against the plans of the coal-mine management to eliminate jobs. They won a provisional withdrawal of the plans, and a social-pact arrangement was set up, very much on the quiet, between the coal-mine management, the government and the trade union.
Some other sectors of the working class subsequently entered the fight, particularly the railroad workers at the end of January. They did not, however, form a common trade-union front, since the Christian trade union actively opposed this "premature" strike in a sector where there is a long tradition of unity between the two unions.
At Caterpillar in Charleroi, the workers in a joint trade-union front managed to block the introduction of variable wages. A four-week-long strike at the Jemeppes-Kessales steel plant was finally sold out by the trade-union leadership. We should note in particular a four-day strike against "flexible hours" at the Van Hool bus factory, a strike of a week and a half at the Honda plant in Ghent against the arbitrary behaviour of the bosses, a strike lasting several days at Tubemeuse (a steel plant in Liege) to defend jobs, a four-week strike at the FN armaments factory in Liege over a contract that ended in a partial victory, and the list goes on and on. But this will to fight on the part of the working class has not been sufficient to solve the problems presented by the general offensive prepared by the government.
Because of the policies of the trade-union leadership, a series of mobilizations against the previous MartensGol government failed to make it back off, even though the publicservices strike in September 1983 did obtain some concessions. In this situation, marked as it is by the
Strikes and demonstrations persisted in Belgium throughout May (DR)
ATE
Martens' austerity plan THE AUSTERITY plan is very detailed and consists of measures that directly or indirectly hit every sector of the working class. Here are some examples:
• Public investment will be cut by 13,200 million Belgian francs (293 million US dollars). Most notably, this means less spending on the economic infrastructure such as road-building, ports and so on.
• Reductions in the budget for the railways, post, telecommunications, urban transport, ship-building, school-building and so on. In all of these areas there will be a knock-on effect for other enterprises that depend on these sectors.
• Proposed job losses are 4,700 in the mines, 10,000 in the textile industry, 1,500 in ship-building and 3,000 in the steel industry.
• In 1986, the total salary bill for civil servants has to be reduced by 1.75 per cent compared to 1984 levels, and reduced by a further 1 per cent in 1987.
• The profitable state-run telecommunications industry (RTT) has to immediately return 1 per cent of its profits to the state. All subsidies to RTT have been abolished, the aim being to eventually privatize it.
• In the hospitals, 6,000 beds are to be abolished. • All new vacancies in the education system that have been opened up since 1985 are to be frozen.
• Benefits for those taking early retirement that have already been fixed will be more heavily taxed and new benefits will be reduced.
• All retirement pensions are to be lowered. The age of retirement for women is to be raised from 60 years to 65 years.
• Maternity benefits are to be reduced by 10 per cent. • The Martens' austerity plan is not even going to leave the dead in peace are enough."
But on February 4, 1986, the CSC National Committee made no decision to take immediate action. In failing to do that the the CSC leadership provided the room the government needed to get special powers from parliament. Moreover, the CSC was putting its bets on social-pact negotiations with the employers planned for April 1986, which concerned private enterprises. Thus, the CSC was setting the stage for division, by separating the social services beneficiaries and public workers - the government's prime targets - from the private sector. But it was not yet all over, since the CSC leadership, while waiting for negotiations with the government, declared its hostility to the measures relating to youth, the unemployed, pensioners and so on. The CSC labeled these points "unacceptable," but the government did not seem inclined to make concessions that would weaken its internal cohesion.
For its part, the FTB failed to For ite nart the FOTR failed to come out with a real plan for mobilization. Youth, women and pensioners were supposed to serve as "shock troops," according to a union official. Then the FTB public-services federation undertook a real mobilization by bringing together in Brussels several hundred trade-union officials on February 7 and printing 16,000 copies of a leaflet for activists to distribute. But the trade-union federations in the private sector did not seem ready to move, and were banking on socialpact negotiations with the employers and the government. Also, the Walloon FTB and the Francophone PS continued their electoral agreement and launched a campaign that could only repel the CSC and give the Flemish Socialists a pretext to abstain. Nevertheless, the FGTB congress, held on March 21-22, adopted a proposal for a national demonstration for May 31. While this proposal was modest in relation to the stakes -especially since the FGTB did not propose any other action while waiting for the demonstration - the decision for the action was nonetheless a defeat for those inside the FGTB who favored passivity or "falling back on the Walloon country" The latter strategy, advocated by the FGTB in Liege, fitted into the framework of an alliance with a Walloon modernist wing of the bourgeoisie.
But this strategy was being increasingly questioned inside the Walloon FGTB by leaders who have concluded from the past defeats that unity between the FGTB and the CSC, and between the Flemish and Francophone workers, is necessary to beat the government. This was true, notably, of the FTB leaderInternational Viewpoint 14 July 1986
- it is proposed that social security with funeral expenses. effects of the crisis and of unemployment, it is illusory to bank on a spontaneous explosion capable of out-flanking the trade-union leaderships and setting in motion a new dynamic toward a general strike. More than in the past, the militant activists have a tendency to turn toward their trade-union organizations, hoping to create in them the conditions for the remobilization of the working class. A plan of action against Martens-Gol
The situation in the trade-union movement is extremely complex. On the one hand, the FGTB is officially fighting the government, but it cannot manage to develop a plan that can unify its forces. On the other hand, the CSC leadership supports the government, but it is forced to put some conditions on this support that are contradictory to the government's plans.
At the end of 1985, the FGTB leadership, facing the prospect of four more years of the Martens-Gol government with the socialist parties in opposition, began to speak of a plan of action against Martens-Gol. The Socialist Workers Party [POS - Parti ouvrier socialiste, the Belgian section of the Fourth International], without sowing any illusions whatever about the Socialist trade-union leadership's motivations or its willingness to follow through, decided to take advantage of the prospects opened up 8 benefits will no longer be paid to help by the willingness to act shown by a part of the trade-union leadership.
An important issue for remobi. lizing the FGTB is a policy of an outstretched hand offered by the Socialist trade-union's leadership to the leadership of the CSC, in the public services and throughout the union movement. This reflects the understanding by the POS of the vital importance of a common trade-union front for the success of the struggles. Such a tactic of the outstretched hand is based on the fact that the CSC will encounter difficulties in maintaining its support for the government.
The POS proposes and advocates this tactie to the most conscious workers and trade unionists. This involves an uphill fight against ultraleft and spontaneist reactions which are rooted in a certain tradition in the Belgian workers' movement, which are reflected in the political weaknesses of the workers' vanguard.
At the beginning of January 1986, the POS addressed an open letter to the CSC urging it to grasp the hand tendered by the FGTB and at the same time emphasizing the opposition inside the CSC to the leadership's policies. For example, the newspaper of the Francophone Christian white-collar workers stated: "As soon as the governmental program is made public, it will be necessary immediately to make a tough-minded analysis, to evaluate the degree of the responsiveness to the trade-unions' positions and to get started with the negotiations and actions to which the trade-union leaderships are committed. Four years of deception
ship in Charleroi. A national FGTB demonstration was a move toward these positions. But this demonstration was to be bypassed by the evolution of the struggle, in which the FTB's hesitations and divisions would be very detrimental.
After obtaining special powers from parliament at the end of March 1986, the government withdrew into a "conclave " to translate into concrete terms the budget cuts provided for in the governmental declaration. With successive leaks, the workers became aware of the levels of the attacks, and the temperature of the working class rose rapidly. In mid-April the Limbourg miners spontaneously went out on strike in reaction to the news that the government was planning to close three of the five coal mines still operating and to reduce by half the mumber of workers employed in the mines.
Now, the province of Limbourg, where Belgian mining activity is concentrated, has one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe: one worker out of four has no job. After a few days, the union leaders, who did not want this strike because they did not believe that it was possible to save jobs in the mines, recognized the strike, and it rapidly brought pressure to bear on the government. But on May 4, after two weeks, the leadership called for a return to work. After
International Viewpoint 14 July 1986
GREVER GEN
KALE
FETB
On May 31, over 150,000 marched against the Martens-Gol government (DR this stab in the back, some of the miners held out for two more weeks. But finally the trade-union leaders succeeded in breaking the strike, just when elsewhere in the country working-class mobilization was mounting. The disapproval in the unions of the attitude of the miners' trade-union leaders was reflected by a public appeal made by several federations in other industries condemning the miners' federation and calling for recognition of the strike. That constituted a violation of individual union jurisdiction rarely seen in the history of the Belgian trade-union movement. A second front opens
At the beginning of May, when the overnment was still in "conclave" and the miners were still on strike, the public-services unions opened a second front against Martens-Gol. The May 1 demonstrations served as a springboard. On May 6 the strike called jointly by the FTB and CSC was a resounding success. Public transport stopped, and the common front between Socialists and Christians was strengthened. The strike was also massive in the post office, telecommunications, at SABENA [the
Belgian airline], at RTBF and BRT (radio-television), in state-owned marine transport, in Walloon education - in short, in all sectors seriously threatened by privatization and lay offs. The creation of a united trade-union front was a trump card. Everyone knew that they could not stop there. The railworkers of Charleroi wanted to continue the strike. At the time of the FTB's cross-sectoral meeting at Charleroi on May 6 protests were being raised everywhere. The activists said the demonstration planned for May 31 was too late. The Charleroi FGTB bureau voted for a 48hour national strike.
On May 7, more than 15,000 teachers in the Catholic network demonstrated in Brussels. This was a hard blow for the government. During the night of May 12, the railworkers relaunched their movement. The strike spread rapidly out from Charleroi. The two rail unions, those of the FTB and the CSC, recognized the strike and decided on a 48-hour national strike beginning Thursday, May 15. The movement accelerated rapidly, with strikes all over the place - from postal workers to telecommunications workers. The FGTB leadership issued an appeal for solidarity by the private sector with the public services. It was a vague slogan, but it nevertheless gave official cover to the activists to initiate actions in
Nicaragua solidarity gets a boost in Belgium ON MAY 10 this year the Socialist Belgian workers, federation, the FGTB, organized a festival in solidarity with Nicaragua. It was a great success, bringing together hundreds of people — mostly trade unionists, including those from the important industrial sectors. One of the union militants involved in the solidarity work, Philippe Grignard, a delegate from the FTB at Oterpilla, spoke about the work brigade he had organized to Nicaragua.
Nicaraguan solidarity work has depended for some years on a small group of committed activists, but now it has been revived with the support of a federation of more than a million members. The president of the FGTB, A. Vandenbroucke, spoke at the festival and his presence was a sign of the progress of the campaign. It is even more significant given that the social-democratic International and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions are divided between the (barely disguised) Reagan supporters and those supporting Nicaragua. Below are some extracts from Vandenbroucke's speech, which opens up the road in Belgium for an extensive campaign among FGTB militants. 6 6 Because it has chosen its own path, Nicaragua has been penalized by a total financial and economic boycott and by a bloody war on its frontiers. A war that has already cost the lives of more than 12,000 people. And all that with the open support of the United States' government. What sin has this tiny country committed - which has scarcely three million inhabitants - to have stirred up such an anger in the most powerful nation in the world?
"Is it the agrarian reform, which has given the small peasants and the agricultural workers land that was occupied by the Somoza family and its friends, Americans and others? Or is it the investments in education and health care, crowned by a massive, successful literacy campaign? Is it the democratization of political, economic and social life, characterized by free elections and the participation in decision-making by the trade unions and other mass organizations? Or perhaps it is the pursuit of a non-aligned foreign policy, the fight for fair prices [in the world market] and for a solution to the enormous debt burden?
"This does not mean that we want to paint Nicaragua as being the model for the third world or for the socialist movement. Our solidarity is therefore a critical solidarity. Thus, we have a critical approach to the declaration of the state of emergency last October. Certainly, we understand the circumstances leading to this decision. And, in fact, we should emphasize that — unlike many other Latin American countries - this is not a state of emergency with a curfew and with special courts. But rights such as the right to strike, the right to freedom of expression and the right to meet are, for us, fundamental.
"We therefore insist to the Nicaraguan government that it should show its democratic intentions by relieving the pressure that there is today on these rights. That is why it is good that, in a spirit of critical solidarity, the FGTB is holding out its hands to Nicaragua. This is also why it is useful that we try to put into practice concrete aid projects in collaboration with the big trade union organizations in Nicaragua. This is a sign that Nicaraguan people can moment when the national leadership of the CSC was most under pressure from mobilizations, the FGTB leadership remained paralyzed.
However, on Thursday, May 27, the CSC general council could not resist the pressure from the many regional federations and unions opposed to the government's plan. Jef Houthuys, the right-wing president of the Christian confederation, and the national leadership of the CSC were compelled to distance themselves from the government's measures. They demanded an emergency meeting of the government under the threat of generalizing the actions. Pressure was making itself felt from the Christian teachers and the Christian publicservices federations, but also from various places in the private sector where the common trade-union front was taking shape at the base. Moreover, the government's attacks against the unemployed, women and social welfare recipients in general were in contradiction to the CS's insistence on an austerity policy, but one that spared the weakest.
The May 31 demonstration organized by the FTB was so successful that none of the bourgeois newspapers could hide their surprise at the strength of the mobilization. (2) This demonstration, originally intended to be just the first step in a plan of action, in fact, came in the midst of social upheaval. The success of the mobilization reflected the workers' desire for united action. But it also reflected the workers' perception that victory was possible -the government was hesitating; the CSC was having difficulties in maintaining unflagging support for the government's policies.
But it only took 24 hours atter But it onlv took 24 hours after this historic demonstration for the FGTB leadership to break the momentum of the mobilization. From Monday, June 2 on, thousands of trade unionists were waiting for the word for a cross-sectoral national strike. That is what was needed - to strike while the iron was hot, to widen the rifts between the CSC and the government, not to let the public-service workers wear themselves out in the conflict. And that is just what was demanded by an official call from the central region of the FGTB, which had been involved in a cross-sectoral strike since May 22.
But the expected word did not come. The FTB leadership decided on regional strikes, some to be on June 13 and others on June 20. Basically it was orienting toward negotiations. negotiations were begun all over the place: in education, the post office, 102, June 23, ten. See International Viewpoint,' No.
International Viewpoint 14 July 1986 count on the involvement of women ciples for which they are fighting the private sector wherever possible, and especially in the large metallurgical plants in Walloon. A demonstration of 10,000 workers in the central region served as the catalyst for a general strike there that would last until the end of May.
The temperature rose while the government kept on mulling over its plans, the bourgeois newspapers lost patience and the stock market dropped. The workers sensed that victory was possible.
In this context, on Thursday, May 22, the FGTB National Bureau met. The public-services strike was hardening. In Mons-Borinage it was general. In the central region a crosssectoral general strike was developing, private and public together. On that Thrusday and Friday, the big Walloon private industries went on strike for 48 hours with the public sector. Flanders was rather late in 10 and men who know that the prin- 99 are also, in large part, our own. beginning to act in the private sector, but there too things began to move.
That same morning, Marcel Schoeters, president of the Antwerp FGTB, offered before 8,000 demonstrators to go "to Brussels" to propose a national cross-sectoral strike of 48 to 72 hours as a prelude to the May 31 demonstration.
• This constituted a firm and unifying battle cry for the whole FGTB in place of the vague orders that left it up to each regional section and each sector to decide. But Gillon, the "boss" of the Liege metal workers and an advocate of "falling back on , the Walloon country" came out against this sort of battle cry. When Vandenbroucke, the FGTB president, suggested moving in the direction of a common trade-union front and publicly inviting the CSC to participate in the May 31 demonstration, Gillon threatened to walk out. At a
local transport, the railways and on the cross-sectoral level. The dynamic of the struggle was reversed. Instead of unification, there was division; instead of progress, retreat. And so the government and CSC leadership got a breathing space to patch up the dangerous breaches that had opened in their alliance. Vandenbroucke, the FTB president, announced that he was giving the government two more weeks. Could the FTB leaders really be thinking of launching the movement in the middle of the summer?
The goverment, however, is not yet in the clear. The CSC leadership has expressed its opposition to 17 of the government's measures. It remains to be seen how far the government can go in negotiations and still maintain its internal cohesion. The FGTB, whose goal continues to be the destabilization of the MartensGol cabinet, is pinning its hopes on the goverment's problems in this respect. It hopes to create favorable conditions for a negotiated return of the socialists to the government -perhaps even without elections. The perhaps even without elections. The situation remains unstable, and any. thing is still possible when the country returns to work in the fall.
The growth of stridales in rosant The growth of struggles in recent months has considerably undermined the cohesiveness of the FGTB's trade-union apparatus. This weakening seems to be structural Today this apparatus is far from demonstrating the power, the cohesion and the confidence that it exhibited for decades and which formed the frame. work within which the trade-union left has learned to act. The new relationship of forces offers new possibilities for the fighting trade unionists who have reacted intuitively, showing more initiative and audacity in action. But at the same time, the challenges facing this trade-union left are greater, and it cannot meet them simply through a spontaneous response.
In fact, because they are preoccupied with solving the problems through action, the vanguard trade-union militants often underestimate the imporatnce of being able to analyze situations beyond their own sectors. The trade-union left also neglects some other questions such as organizing struggles around precise demands and getting the active participation of the masses of workers. Especially they underestimate the importance of offering a political solution that can serve as a focus for the fight to unite the workers and their organizations. To be equal to today's tasks in the Belgian class struggle, the trade-union vauguard is going to have to resolve these questions by learning the lessons from this last wave of struggles. згротіавіло
International Viewpoint 14 July 1986