Baba Aye's

The dust seems to have settled on the prolonged “pension reform revolt”. On Wednesday October 27, the new Pension Act which increased the retirement age from 60 to 62 years was passed into law by the French government. This occurred despite a groundswell of general strikes and mass protests which showed the discontent of the immense majority of people in France with the pension reform in particular and the age of austerity sweeping through France, as with the rest of Europe and indeed the world, in general. This article captures some of the highlights of this pitched class struggle in France and draws possible lessons for an unfolding future as workers and trade unions across Europe and the world as a whole, square up to the challenges of a period of anti-working-class attacks in the garb of “austerity”. These would include: the impact of changing forms of work relations on how the struggle unfolded; the nature of solidarity which buoyed the movement; the evolving strategies of work...

Poor commuters using the public transport system and workers delivering transit services, including light rail and bus drivers are facing hard times in the United States. But they are also beginning to organise and fight to ameliorate their conditions and the salvage the sector. This is in the wake of the sharp rise of fuel in 2008 and the simultaneous Great Recession. The attendant difficulties of livelihood to the economic crisis and rising fuel prices have made the need for an efficient and affordable public transport system a palpable one for millions of Americans. The response of the American State and private transit agencies has however been to drastically reduce funding for the sector, laying off workers and cutting down on supply and services rendered, due to the low or near absence of any significant profit accruing for them. This is a classic case of putting capitalist greed over and above the needs of the teeming mass of the country’s population. Over 80% of the transit a...

Restiveness is spreading through Chinese firms across Africa, as cases of high handedness, and even the shootings of agitating workers assumes rampant proportions, especially in Zambia, where workers have been shot thrice in the last few months. This have led to some tensions in Afro-Chinese relations, even while the states, which rely more and more on Chinese capital, try to explain away this despicable acts. There seems to be a palpable need for the trade union movement on the African continent to take a position on such untenable highhandedness and violence in industrial relations. Examples abound that buttress this need. Last year, in Mozambique, African workers were made to wear badges inscribed with the word escravo which means “slave” in Portuguese, by the China Henan International Cooperation Group (CHICO). The company eventually explained away the incident as one of mistranslation, but most of the workers that were affected, describing the work regime they suffered in CHICO...