NAGORNO-KARABAKH / AROUND THE WORLD
AROUND
THE
WORLD SPANISH STATE Maastricht versus the workers THE signature of the Maastricht Treaty on European union by the Spanish State implies a drastic austerity programme in the attempt to meet the treaty's convergence criteria, including social spending cuts, and privatization of transport, health and education and some state-owned enterprises. Whatever the details, the programme does not allow room for any agreement with the unions and must mean a wage squeeze. The "Socialist" government of Felipe Gonzalez is no doubt hoping that high unemployment will help in cowing worker protest.
The core of the plan is to reduce the public deficit and change the state's role in the economy. Public services are to undergo reforms, minimum wage regulations will be abolished for some professional sectors, monopolies in water supply, gas and electricity will be broken up and so on.
For workers the plan means an across the board onslaught, including measures to increase the geographical mobility of labour, reform of labour contracts to make sacking easier and reductions in unemployment insurance. At the same time the government is planning to reduce public spending on health.
Indirectly, all this will put pressure on wages and bring job losses. The union confederations, the General Workers' Union (UDT) and the Workers' Commissions (CCOO) have long hesitated to confront these plans, while calls from the ranks for a general strike have increased.
Finally, after statements from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) "advising" European governments to reduce unemployment benefits and the adoption of a decree to this effect by the
1992 Spanish government, the UGT leadership finally felt obliged to take a stand, stating that it would organize a gradually increasing mobilization until the project was withdrawn.
In agreement with the CCOO the UGT has called for a half day of industrial action at the end of May and a general strike in October 1992. The UGT's general secretary, Nicolas Redondo, has declared that it is necessary to move towards a general strike because "we are not sure that these will be the last anti-worker decisions by the government.
The leadership of the Socialist Party has supported the government decisions, while offering to mediate between government and unions (Sources: Pagina Abierta, El Pais). * AUSTRALIA Left candidate wins byelection AN independent left candidate, Phil Cleary won a by-election in a Melbourne seat traditionally seen as a stronghold of the ruling Labor Party and once occupied by former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke, on April 11, 1992. 9
Cleary's campaign was supported by a
May 11, 1992 •
AROUND THE WORLD / CANADA number of veteran leftists, and some leftwing trade unions publicly ditched the Labor Party to back him. Even the conservative ACTU, the Australian union confederation, declined to call for first preference votes for Labor.
Despite efforts to downplay the result, everyone knows that it is a referendum on the policies of the government, which has presided over the highest levels of unemployment since the 1930s and a depression that has meant growing poverty. A report in Adelaide's Advertiser on April 14 claimed that one out of every four children in that city of 1.5 million people goes to school hungry every day. The report stressed that poverty, not avoidable neglect, was the cause.