Published on Saturday, 1 October 2022

After 5 months of struggle, the workers of the SUTNA managed to get a wage increase from the bosses that prevents the value of the labor force from losing that much in the face of the adjustment (austerity measures) and inflation. But the most important thing is that they did it by imposing the workers' methods of paralyzing production, the basis of power of the bourgeoisie. And they managed to break the big bourgeois front that had been formed to defeat the workers and their leadership, within which are all the wings of the bureaucracy, from the most rancid to those who pretend to be militant, like Pablo Moyano (lorry drivers union).

They showed where the power of the working class is, in production, and not in the corridors of Parliament, nor in the offices of ministries. Moreover, this conflict had an international expression, as it received the solidarity of the Brazilian union, which opened up the possibility of an international action. The unity of the workers of the three tire plants, with picket lines, strikes, demonstrations, staggered stoppages, led by a recovered union such as SUTNA, also showed why we must recover our organizations for the struggle, kick the union bureaucracy out of our organizations and fight for the unions to become revolutionary tools in the struggle for power.

And they showed, for the umpteenth time, where our enemies are: in the government, in the employers' opposition, in national and international businessmen and in the trade union bureaucracy.

The bosses had to give in on some points in the negotiations, but they did not give in on the discussion of work rhythms, i.e., on the control of production. This is the task that is still pending, especially because it is a union that is centrally led and influenced by the PO. We say this on the basis that the unions must broaden their functions, i.e., not only fight for wages, but also question the power inside the factories, in the need for workers' control of production to show the whole class the power of workers' leadership against the anarchy of capital.

Madanes, owner of FATE, made it clear throughout much of the conflict that his aim was to destroy union organization in order to ensure that labor productivity would not be affected by union problems. The need to guarantee continuous work is one of his obsessions. Marx debated much about the importance of time in bourgeois economics and said: "We should not say that one man's hour is worth another man's hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time's carcass." This definition of Marx is the foundation of the capitalist system for exploitation, that is why we Marxists fight to destroy the relation between capital and labor, and this destruction cannot come about in any other way than in a revolutionary way.

After this struggle, the SUTNA has the possibility of organizing a tendency within our class in the need of confronting the adjustment and our class enemies. It can launch a campaign for a Congress of rank-and-file shop stewards to vote on a plan of struggle, calling for the formation of union oppositions in all the unions and, especially, because of the sympathy that this conflict generated among the workers of the main car manufacturers, where the SMATA bureaucracy has just agreed with the bosses on greater labor flexibilization.

For a workers' way out of the crisis.