Workers, youth hit streets in Spain and Portugal

The European ruling class is still focusing its weapons against the Greek workers. But now all European workers are under attack. In the week that ended Feb. 26, some of the hardest class battles took place in the Spanish state. There, in the fourth biggest economy in the eurozone, official unemployment is more than 21 percent.

On Feb. 19, the two largest union confederations, the CCOO and the UGT, which represent 80 percent of organized labor, called a countrywide protest. According to the organizers, more than 1 million people joined the actions, held in 57 cities across Spain, that attacked the government’s new labor “reforms.”

Many consider these laws the biggest attacks on workers’ rights since the fascist Franco dictatorship, which ended in the mid-1970s. Those in the M15 movement of “the indignant ones,” analogous to the Occupy movement in the U.S., joined the mass action. They also joined shout-outs to the union leadership to call for a general strike on Feb. 29.

So far, only the independent unions in the Basque Country have called for the Feb. 29 strike. In the Basque Country especially, as well as in Galicia in the northwest and Catalonia, the working class has been more actively engaged in the class and political struggle.

The official union leadership on the federal level has called only one general strike — with limited success — on Sept. 29, 2010. They also signed an agreement with the government accepting cuts in workers’ wages and protections. Because of this capitulation to the bosses, the leadership has lost much, if not all, of its authority with militant workers and revolutionary elements. Still, the depth of the economic crisis has resulted in a situation where the masses are demanding that the union leadership call a struggle with the bosses and the now right-wing government.

Students vs. cops in Valencia

Overall youth unemployment in Spain is more than 49 percent. This means many young people have had to put their lives on hold. In Valencia, a port city on the Mediterranean, the third-largest city in Spain with about 2 million people in the metropolitan area, youth unemployment is even higher than average.

When government budget cuts led to cutting off heat, water and electricity in Valencia’s schools in mid-February, it was no surprise that students began to protest, sometimes occupying buildings. On Feb. 20, 10,000 youth and students took to the streets. The police responded brutally, first with batons, then rubber bullets and teargas. Forty youth were arrested.

By the end of the week, there were demonstrations in dozens of other cities in solidarity with the students and youth of Valencia, which has become the epicenter of the youth struggle.

Portugal general strike set for March 22

The major labor federation in Portugal, the CGTP-IN, has called another general strike for March 22. As in most of the countries on the eurozone’s periphery, Portugal’s working class faces cutbacks to social services and an attack on such workers’ rights as job protection, vacations and other benefits. These cuts have been demanded not only by the Portuguese bosses but also by the eurozone bankers.

The CGTP-IN has declared that its actions are in the interest of all workers, not just its own members, and has called on all the unions — whether or not they are affiliated with a federation — to help build a united workers’ action against the new labor contract that increases the exploitation of all workers.

The peripheral countries — Greece, Portugal, and Ireland — had up to now been treated as part of the imperialist club, but now their workers are being clubbed into semicolonial status. Even Spain and Italy face these pressures, resulting to a direct assault on the working class in those countries.

Protests in Italy, Germany

In Italy, where workers also face an austerity program from a government imposed by the European banks, the metalworkers (FIOM) have called an 8-hour general strike on March 9.

In Germany, the most powerful imperialist state at the center of Europe, the government workers’ union, Ver.di, called a protest Feb. 27 in Berlin in solidarity with the workers’ struggle in Greece under the slogan “Today Greece, tomorrow it’s us.” (Junge Welt, Feb. 27)

The European ruling class has coordinated its assault on the working class using the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — with the support of U.S. banks. Up to now Europe’s workers have responded on a country-by-country basis.

In Greece and Portugal, where communist parties have influence among the workers, these parties have made it clear that they see no solution to the crisis under the capitalist system. The challenge to workers’ leadership throughout Europe, as well as in the U.S., is how to defend the workers even though a struggle to overturn the system does not appear to be an immediate option.