exemplary
BELGIUM the glass strike: by DENIS HORMAN The strike of plate-glass workers, which began May 8 and involved more than 4,000 workers in the window-glass, large mirror, and hand mirror industries in the regions of Charleroi and Houdeng (in the Center), was joined May 13 by the gloss workers of Mol and Zeebrugge in Flanders (the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium), thus drawing the workers of the entire window-glass industry into struggle. The strike was ended in Charleroi and Zeebrugge on May 27 after a referendum in which 63.7 percent of the workers of Charleroi and the Center voted to go back to work. This strike was one of the most important to take place in Belgium during the past ten years, even though the press, radio, and television -- and even the traditional workers organizations -- did not give the strike the attention it deserved. It was the first time that a strike of such dimensions had taken place in the glass industry -- a regional strike in the three subsectors of the glass industry and a national strike in the window-glass sector drawing more than 6, 000 workers into struggle. There were two additional central aspects to this battle that will have important consequences for the battles to come: * By imposing immediate and unconditional reintegration of a militant union at Multiplane (a small company in the Charleroi region that is a subsidiary of Glaverbel), the Charleroi glass workers showed that it was possible to block the plans of multinational trusts, in this case Glaverbel-Mécaniver (a subsidiary of the French BSN group) when they attempt to attack trade-union freedoms. * The Charleroi glass workers created strike committees in each factory and federated these committees into a regional strike committee, the first time this had been done since the miners strike of 1932. These methods of struggle, which the European workers have been utilizing for some years now, were the basis for the two victories won by the glass workers: reintegration of the militant union and important concessions by the employers to the program of demands advanced by the strikers. Preparing the way The May 1974 strike -- accompanied in the Charleroi region by the formation of the strike committees in nearly all factories, the occupation of about half the plants, and the election of a regional strike committee -- was not the result of an action accident or of the spontaneity of the masses of workers, although it is true that this spontaneity was surprising in its scope and combativity. This exemplary action, which has generated more and more interest among the workers vanguard, was principally the fruit of slow and persistent work undertaken for nearly a dozen years by a hard core of vanguard trade-unionists at Glaverbel and especially at Glaverbel-Gilly near Charleroi. At the beginning, these vanguard militants were grouped around the bulletin "La Nouvelle Défense" (The New Defense), which was sold regularly in several glass factories and developed a program of fighting trade-unionism by advancing clear and effective slogans dealing with all the problems confronting the glass workers. The May 1974 strike was the result of this patient work carried out by the comrades of La Nouvelle Défense, work that was based around the following axes: * Trade-union democracy. In struggle after struggle the vanguard workers at Glaverbel-Gilly showed the masses of workers how the bureaucracy was in practice slowing down and sabotaging the struggles, and especially how positive things could be accomplished against this sabotage. Thus, the vanguard was able to gradually win the masses to its ideas, to get across little by little the practice of trade-union democracy through the regular assemblies in the factories and through establishing a new trade-union delegation in January 1972 outside the normal period of union elections (which are scheduled to take place only once every four years!). There was a tendency debate within the factory, which allowed for turning around the day-to-day situation in the plant. The same sort of work was later carried out in a nearly identical manner in Roux, another Glaverbel factory in the Charleroi area. * Workers control over the arbitrary acts of the employers. Because it counterposes the interests of the workers to the imperatives of profitability, workers control cannot be won through documents but only through direct and organized action. It must be imposed in concrete struggles beginning from the immediate concerns of the workers. Its application will be effective only insofar as the workers are directly involved and organized inside the factory in the first place. The militants of La Nouvelle Défense and the workers of GlaverbelGilly well understood this dynamic of workers control. They put it into practice especially in defense of employment by showing that this fight inevitably raised the question of workers control: verification of the company's accounts not only
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BELGIUM on the basis of figures, but also on the basis of investigation of the work place (for example, La Nouvelle Défense drew up a concrete work plan to control production and stocks), control of the work pace (for example, a slow down at Glaverbel-Gilly to counter the employers' attempts to "rationalize" the personnel), control of overtime hours, over hiring and firing, etc. By learning in practice how to challenge the power of the employers the glass workers tested their capacity to take charge of their own interests themselves. * Freedom of trade-union action as against integration into
Threats of layoffs were accentuated when the BSN trust took over Glaverbel. In March 1971 the glass workers of the Charleroi and Basse-Sambre (Moustier) regions organized a response to this threat by forming the Coordinating Committee of Glass Workers to Defend Employment. In October 1972 the Charleroi glass workers rejected a proposal from the trade-union leadership to create an organ of "concert" for the glass industry. Likewise, the workers of GlaverbelGilly systematically opposed all limitations on the right to strike or on trade-union freedoms. They went on strike without clearing it with the union leadership, held general assemblies in the plants whenever it was necessary, fought against layoffs, etc. * The February 1973 Glaverbel-Gilly strike: a dress rehersal. During this strike, which lasted for one week and was accompanied by a factory occupation and the election of a strike committee, the workers continued production; but they reduced the work pace and fabricated non-standard and therefore unsaleable glass. This demonstrated something that would be decisive in future strikes in the glass industry: The classical forms of employer blackmail (lockout, creating unemployment for months) could be eliminated if the factory was occupied and the action was organized with maximum effectiveness through the formation of a strike committee. * Extension of La Nouvelle Défense. As early as 1970, and more especially after the two most important struggles (the establishment of the new union delegation in January 1972 and the February 1973 strike), the Nouvelle Défense militants understood the danger of their becoming isolated and the con22 sequent possibility of the employers' taking action against the , most combative militants, whose identities were known. In addition, the trade-union apparatus, increasingly on its guard and on the defensive, would not fail to take advantage of the relative fragility of the local "breakthrough" to slow it down or even to crush it. So the new union delegation and the Nouvelle Défense nucleus immediately started working to broaden the base of the regroupment of militant trade-unionists, both by extending circulation of the bulletin and by setting up additional Nouvelle Défense groups. The exemplary character of the May 1974 strike is in large part explainable by this preparatory work. * Immediate preparation of the strike had to be a supplementary precondition for success. All the glass worker delegates of the Charleroi region met on several occasions to prepare the fight and to adopt the principle of strike committees and their federation into a regional committee. For the first time in the glass industry, a common national meeting was held of delegates from the FGTB (Fédération Générale du Travail Belgique -- General Federation of Belgian Labor, the Social Democratic trade-union federation) and the CSC (Confédération des Syndicats Chrétiens -- Confederation of Christian Trade Unions). At this meeting, held in Brussels, there was discussion of the organization of a national strike (occupations, strike committees, protection of the machinery, coordination of the struggle). During this meeting André Henry, a leading delegate from Glaverbel-Gilly and a member of the Central Committee of the Ligue Révolutionnaire des Travailleurs (Revolutionary Workers League, Belgian section of the Fourth International) presented the experiences of the gains of the February 1973 strike at Gilly. It was mainly on the basis of these gains that the regional strike, and later the national strike, was able to be rapidly organized and strengthened. Alignment of forces Although the May 1974 national strike united the glass workers of Charleroi, the Center, and Flanders in the same struggle, the development of the strike was nevertheless uneven, reflecting the still uneven consciousness and combativity of the workers of the various regions. It was in the Charleroi
area that the strike went through a remarkable development under the initiative of a few key factories. The strike saw the emergence of new forms of struggle. The vanguard trade-union in the Charleroi glass industry took up the forms of struggle appropriate to combating capitalist concentration and mergers, the multinational corporations that impose their implacable will on governments and union leaderships, and the Glaverbel-Mécaniver multinational corporation that is attacking trade-union freedoms. The "heart" of the strike, of its effectiveness and unity, was the constitution of strike committees in eleven striking glass works in Charleroi (committees elected democratically on the basis of three or four workers per sector) and the election of the regional strike committee of four representatives from each local committee. Daily coordination between the regional committee and the local committees, combined with daily general assemblies in the plants, allowed the workers to participate in the struggle to the fullest extent possible. They felt themselves responsible for the strike, taking up the best traditions of the workers movement. This undeniable fact can be illustrated by two essential activities of the strike: * Organization, strengthening, and extension of the struggle. The daily meetings of the regional and local committees, combined with the general assemblies, allowed the workers to distribute an information leaflet in the name of the regional committee, to send delegations of strikers to other regions, to organize a regional demonstration, to strengthen the strike pickets in the weaker areas, and to set up a commission for financial support to the Multiplane strikers. The most important decisions marking turns in the strike (rejection of the first proposal by the employers on reintegration of the militant union, a reintegration that would have been limited to a two-week period before the plant moved to another location, continuation of the strike after a referendum held on May 15) were made in general assemblies of all the factory strike committees. It is absolutely clear that it was the democratic organization of the struggle that gave it its power and strength. * Occupation of seven glass works under the leadership and permanent control of the strike committees. The organization of the occupation established real dual power in the factories. Workers power confronted the power of the employers. As was stressed in a special issue of La Nouvelle Défense published on the strike: "the factory functions because of our arms and our head. ... Very good. So during the strike we are the masters and we will make the decisions on the basis of our own interests!" The occupation -- along with the permanent control of management and organization of labor and production and the protection of the machinery, was the most effective answer to the employers' blackmail. At the end of the second week of the strike, the management of Glaverbel-Mécaniver resorted to its favorite weapon: the threat of layoffs, of shutting down the ovens, of sabotaging the machinery by refusing to supply the plant with raw materials and energy. (The threat was made in a letter sent to all factory councils.) But because of the occupations under the leadership of the strike committees, the response of the workers was not long in coming. At Glaverbel-Gilly the strike committee quickly took over control of reserves. It discovered hidden stocks of fuel oil and found that the tanks were well stocked. There would be no problem for two weeks. The employers tried other tricks as well. For example, they took advantage of the temporary absence of some delegates and strike-committee members to pressure a group of workers in the limestone glass section. For about a half hour, these workers started to produce glass to standard (that is, saleable) dimensions. When the strike committee was apprised of this situation, it informed the strikers and decided to simply wreck that part of production, which was going on in violation of the rules set down by the general assembly of strikers. (Last year at Glaverbel-Gilly the strikers in the "lime-glass" sections of three factories decided to produce off-standard glass in order to prevent the employers from directly selling the glass during or after the strike, thus obliging management to hire workers to rework the glass.) The glass workers of Charleroi have just offered a limited but illuminating lesson and example to all those petty-bourgeois spirits who envisage self-management only under the control of technocrats, to all the upstanding reformists who conceive of socialism as being "achievable" only from the springboard of ministerial portfolios: Socialism is prepared in struggle. The road to socialist self-management goes through democratic organization of strikes, elected and recallable strike committees, and the limited but exemplary experiences of workers control over the management and organization of labor. These new methods of struggle of the glass workers, and especially those of the Charleroi region, are at the root of the two victories won by the strikers and the two lessons that the strike offers to the entire working class. A victory for trade-union freedom of action The immediate and unconditional reintegration of the militant union at Multiplane was the first big victory for the glass workers of Charleroi and the Center. At a time when the employers and the multinational corporations are trying to saddle the trade-union movement with a lead weight, at a time when the trade-union leadership is gladly donning the straitjacket of integration into the system, the glass workers showed the way to fight for the freedom of action of the workers movement. As far back as October 1972 the Charleroi glass workers were asking the national trade-union leaders to account for their move to create an "organ of concert" in the glass industry. In their spontaneous strike of February 1973, the Glaverbel-Gilly workers won freedom of action for their union delegation in the framework of the existing union statutes on local practices. In the regional and national assemblies held to prepare for the new national convention the Charleroi workers had demanded the reduction of the strike-notice period and the revision of the contracts after six months, in case of a big increase in the cost of living. The May 1974 strike forced the employers to reveal their true face. In a letter sent to all factory councils, the Glaverbel management accused the union leaders of not having lived up to their promises in the period leading up to the strike. The management even contested the holding of a strike vote. Then the entire bourgeoisie fell into line. L'Echo de la Bourse, the employers' newspaper, put its finger on the heart of the matter: "It has been said many times that the trade unions have outlived their usefulness; while their action is called for when it is a matter of defending the human interest of the workers, they go too far when they get carried away by the ultimatistic views of their extremist wings; when that happens (and not only in Belgium), it will become impossible to invest... But once again, the economy has nothing in common with these thin-skinned reactions of the union leaders, overtaken
as they are by forces that are not representative of the population. " Or, in other words: Preservation of a system in crisis is totally incompatible with trade-union freedom of action. The weight of this background to the strike, coming after the firing of militants and union delegates at Cockerill, Caterpillar, and elsewhere, makes the importance and scope of this first victory -- the unconditional reintegration of the Multiplane militants -- even more significant for the glass industry and for the whole workers movement. The glass workers strike broke out at first on a regional basis in solidarity with the Multiplane strikers for the reintegration of the militant trade union. But it raised the question of a new contract in the glass industry on a national scale. It is obvious that the workers' success in the first round -- the reintegration of the Multiplane militants -- redoubled their confidence in their own forces and strengthened their struggle for their other demands. The workers were demanding an 8 franc per hour increase for everyone (about USSO.20). After having offered 3.25 francs when the struggle began, the employers finally gave up 5.75 francs beginning May 1 and 2 francs more beginning September 1. The strikers had demanded 10 franc raises for the lowest-paid workers; they won nearly 12 francs (wages will rise from 88.43 francs an hour to 100 francs an hour beginning May 1). Glaverbel also granted year-end bonuses of 19,500 francs instead of the 14,000 francs under the old contract. Further, after ten years' seniority and having reached the age of 62 years for men and 57 years for women, the glass workers will be entitled to premature retirement at their own request. To be sure, there were negative aspects, too. The forty-hour workweek was won only beginning January 1, 1975. The demand to reconsider the contract after six months in the event of a big rise in the cost of living -- one of the key ways to wage the struggle against high prices -- was not won in black and white, but the workers will not abandon this demand in the autumn. (The duration of the contract was reduced from fourteen to twelve months.) The examples set by the Glaverbel strike have already been taken up by other workers. The workers of. Amplex (a subsidiary of an American trust) confiscated a Stock of cassets and magnetic tapes in order to impose their demands. The workers of "Grès de Bouffioulx" (in the Charleroi area) went on strike, occupied the factory, elected a strike committee, and took over production and sales of their own products in order to oppose the shutting down of the plant. Glaverbel, Amplex, Bouffioulx. That is the only road to follow during an autumn that promises to be a hot one. The workers organizations and the strike After thirteen years of virtually uninterrupted governmental participation, the Belgian Social Democracy is now undergoing a "stint in opposition, " which some people want to be as short as possible. Several years ago the Belgian Socialist party moved from "dissident reformism" to "managed" reformism. But its various acrobatics and its increasingly reduced maneuvering room in the context of the deepening of the crisis of the capitalist system and the new rise of workers struggles have driven it further and further from the working class and even from the FGTB, the Socialist union federation, which is increasingly taking its distance from the SP. But independently of the will of the SP leaders, the party's passage into opposition -- even into parliamentarist and reformist opposition -24 opens possibilities for a new dynamic within the traditional organizations (like the Movement Ouvrier Chrétien -- Christian Workers Movement -- the SP, the FGTB, and CSC). The union bureaucracy had to demonstrate the greatest flexibility in face of the extraordinary pressure from the rank and file and especially the structuring and coordination of the glass workers vanguard. To be sure, it tried to bolster its weight in the strike at decisive turning points. But under the threat of becoming totally discredited among a very broad layer of workers, it tried to latch on to the movement and even tried to come out with some "leftist" language to worm its way into the regional strike committee. There was no point in trying to go directly against a powerful rank-and-file upsurge and thus risk compromising its position. The Belgian SP showed its solidarity with the strike through its factory cells, which awakened from a long period of lethargy and were uneasy about the impact of the revolutionary Marxists in the glass industry. The Communist party, which has significant weight in some trade-union delegations, especially in the Charleroi area, but which is very small compared to the Social Democracy, strategy of the "great assembling of progressives" led it to tailend the Socialist party, which was making concession after concession in order to slow down the mobilization and deflect the struggle from the factories and the streets into elections and parliament. The Communist party did not support the glass workers strike. It saluted "the remarkable victory of the glass workers, a victory won by their combativity, cohesion, spirit and discipline, and the farsightedness and responsibility of their union representatives. " But the CP added that "the attempts at division and the antiunion attacks of the ultraleftists" had no effect on the workers. And the CP scarcely mentioned the new forms of struggle -the strike committees in the glass works, the regional strike committee. It is not by accident or from forgetfulness that the CP refrained from putting the accent on the fact that the workers took charge of their own struggle themselves by utilizing methods that are in the best traditions of the international workers movement and that are necessarily rooted in the struggle for socialism. Even Cité, the daily of the Christian Workers Movement, wrote on May 10 that "the strike of the glass workers in the Pays Noir, the reasons for it, and the tactics in action mark a stage toward the workers' taking The Maoist group UCMLB (Union des Communistes MarxistesLéninistes de Belgique -- Union of Marxist-Leninist Communists of Belgium) did not intervene in the glass workers strike in Charleroi. It simply drew its "own lessons" in its newspaper, Unité Rouge. Nevertheless, its sectarian and triumphalist attitude was confirmed by its actions at Caterpillar, which was also on strike during May, and its intervention at Glaverbel-Gilly, which was aimed at explaining that the AMADA, a Mao-Stalinist group in Flanders, "was leading" the strike at Glaverbel-Mol (a factory that had rejected the last referendum and was continuing the strike). UCMLB leads, the masses follow, and all the other workers organizations are deemed "traitorous" and "reformist." In fact, through its sectarian practice, this group, which is otherwise quite combative, demonstrates the same attitude toward the workers as do the bureaucrats and reformists. The task of revolutionary worker militants is not only to build a revolutionary organization. It is also to assist a broad layer of workers who are sincerely anticapitalist but who do not yet desire to join an organization or even to organize themselves.