DailyRadical

on some recent struggles in Greece

Nevertheless, the need to come together with other parts of the working class (mainly parents but also other workers who supported the strike) on a common ground could not be expressed through the demand for a good wage for the teachers (which also implies that intellectual labour is superior to manual). This common ground could only be common needs, that's why the initial demand was transformed into a demand for "1400 euros for everyone" in the middle of the strike and was accepted by the majority of teachers then.

The two-week strike by Puerto Rican teachers was a historic event, in open defiance of Law 45, a ruthless piece of anti-union legislation that outlaws strikes, work stoppages or even voting for such labor action. From the beginning of the walkout on February 20 to the decision to return to the classrooms, approved by a giant assembly on March 5, the action by the Federation of Puerto Rican Teachers (FMPR) threw the island into turmoil. In daring to break the prohibition decreed by the colonial capitalist rulers, the FMPR blazed the way for all Puerto Rican workers.

After six months of struggle, 18 days of strike action and
on the first day of their all out strike for a reduction in working hours, the
bus drivers of Barcelona have achieved an important victory. And they won as a
result of their united mobilisation, based on mass workers' assemblies taking
all decisions, and coordinated through an elected committee.

The Berlusconi has managed to provoke a mass movement that
started with the students but then spread to wider and wider layers. Now a
general strike has been called for December 12. The mood is getting ever more
radical and the ideas of Marxism are consequently getting a greater hearing.

Since the beginning of
this year Belgium has witnessed a wave of wildcat strikes reminiscent of the
1970s. The movement has spread spontaneously from one sector to another.
Significantly it has rekindled class unity across the language divide at the
same time as the bourgeois attempt to divide the working class along national
lines.

Bourgeois historians portray New Zealand as
a place where class conflict has never really existed. Such statements bear no
relation to reality, as the history of New Zealand is a history of class
struggle with the building of the trade union movement in the late 19th
century, the fight against the arbitration system and for militant trade
unionism in the early 20th century culminating in the great strike
of 1913. Today that tradition is once more coming to the fore with a rising
level of working class militancy.

An example of a very militant strike in Severouralsk, one of a series in the
recent period. The miners were determined but the bosses were ruthless. This
experience is another indication of growing working class militancy in Russia.

Although still in its early stages,
there is clearly a reawakening of the Russian working class taking place with a
growing number of strikes taking place. Once this picks up steam at some later
stage it will cut across all the confusion and demoralisation that have been
dominant features in the past.

On May 1, every port on the West Coast of the United States was shut down to demand an end to the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The historic May Day walkout by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is the first time ever that an American union has struck against a U.S. war. The union ranks defied the rulings of an arbitrator, who twice ordered them to go to work.