On May 1

A better Life for People in Iraq Relies on the Intervention of the Working Class!

 posted: 30 apr 2008

 May 1, the day of international working class solidarity is approaching. On this day, the workers and toilers chant: “no to oppression and exploitation!”; “no to capitalist wars!”; “no to wage labor slavery” and “a better world is both possible and obtainable!”

In this world, progress in productive powers of humanity and growth in its capabilities owed to the role played by the working class, translate to more poverty, hunger, deprivation and wars for the working class.

On May 1, the working class of the world emphasizes that this inverted world must be put right side up.

First of May this year approaches while the humanity lives one of the most dangerous period it has ever experienced. Oppression, exploitation, wars, organized crimes, mass killings, absence of the most basic rights and freedoms, hunger, poverty and unemployment destroy the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Oppression of women has become not only a prominent feature of this epoch, but also one of its main pillars.

Progression of the humanity from this barbaric capitalist world to the world of humanism, civility and human values and culture depends on the working class coming to the fore. All the conditions for a free humane socialist society exist and had already existed on 1st May, 150 years ago. The humanity needs no preparations to fulfill a humane, prosperous and free world. What stands before creating a better world is the obstacle of uniting and organizing the working women and men and arming them with revolutionary socialist alternative and prospective.

On May 1 this year, the working class and the deprived mass of people in Iraq live in extremely harsh conditions rarely experienced by humanity in contemporary times.  They live under war, occupation, the dark scenario and where the fate of the society is handed to gangs and sectarian and ethnocentric militias. They live in the grip of hunger, deprivation, poverty and unemployment. Working class’s freedoms and rights are violated and its gains attacked. The occupation and ruling groups try to pass laws which are as reactionary and against workers as laws passed by the Ba’ath regime, such as denying workers the right to establish their own organizations and trade unions and imposing pro-government unions on them as their only representative. The puppet government has adopted the so-called self reliance and financing policy which sets the hands of capitalists free to attack workers, sack them in masses and deny any responsibility toward workers’ living and working conditions. Workers are laid off while there is no social security including unemployment benefit. Billions of dollars of public money are stolen every year and militias and capitalists accumulate immense wealth while the unemployed workers and their family who form the majority of the Iraqi society, are deprived of the most basic standards of living.

On May1, we call upon the working class’s leaders and activists, communists and the freedom loving people to join “May 1 Committees” in the various cities of Iraq. We call on you to hold ceremonies, functions and public meetings on this day in your living and working places and raise workers’ basic and urgent demands.

The Worker-communist Party of Iraq emphasizes the importance of workers uniting their ranks in their mass organizations to achieve the basic and urgent demands which include:

  1. Ending the occupation and abolishing its  puppet government;

  2. Building  a secular government based on  people’s conscious and free will;

  3. Recognizing full and unconditional freedom of worker organization and that building workers’ organizations is workers’ matter and no government has the right to violate this principle under any pretext.

  4. Unemployment benefit for all unemployed people  decided by the representatives of workers;

  5. Immediate repeal of all anti-working class laws and resolutions like the so-called self-reliance and financing law.

  6. Rise in the minimum wages proportional to soaring inflation and costs of living.

 

The WCPI is in the forefront of this relentless struggle and calls upon the mass of workers to support its efforts to end the current catastrophic conditions.

 

Worker-communist Party of Iraq

Mid April 2008

 

www.wpiraq.net

info-english@wpiraq.net

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