Automotive Workers speak up: If not now, when? Let's cross borders and strengthen workers' international unity!

Download PDF

* All over the world we are confronted with a general crisis and drastic convulsions.

* The war in Ukraine, provoked by the invasion of Russian troops in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, incited and heavily armed by US/NATO, is an unjust war.

* The justifications by Russia that they are "denazifying" Ukraine as by the EU and NATO that they are "defending freedom and human rights" are invented and lied about to cover up the cause of the war, the intensified competition of the imperialists for spheres of influence, raw materials, labour and markets to maximize profits for finance capital. In Russia all opposition is suppressed. Let us not allow ourselves to be influenced by social-chauvinist and anti-communist warmongering. Our solidarity belongs to the Ukrainian people, without any trust in Zelensky, and to the Russian people in their struggle against the war.

* World contradictions are intensifying in the context of the world economic and financial crisis, especially between the US and China. China and Russia are expanding their influence in Africa, the struggle for dominance of raw materials in the Arctic is coming to an end. The transition to a global environmental catastrophe is accelerating.

* Russia is openly threatening to use nuclear weapons. For its part, NATO is also massively arming itself. Tactical nuclear weapons do not prevent a nuclear war from endangering humanity, in fact, they even lower the threshold of inhibition. Nuclear power plants serve not less the military use of nuclear energy.

* While the possibilities of the international productive forces could eliminate hunger and misery, environmental destruction and causes of flight, hundreds of billions of dollars and euros are poured into armaments, waste of resources and speculation.

* The masses, and especially the workers, should pay for war and global crisis through partially galloping inflation, destruction of jobs, extension and relaxation of working hours, dismantling of safety and health protection measures, and attacks on the struggle for democratic rights. Now, in Ukraine is possible for employers to increase weekly working time from 40 to 60 hours.

* Our International Coordination of Automotive Workers promotes the joint struggle against this for common demands, strengthens solidarity and practical support, organizes the mutual exchange of experiences and learning. Throughout the world, active resistance is the order of the day against any pusillanimity or narrow-mindedness of one's own country or even one's own employer.

* We oppose the particular oppression of women, as it appears in atrocious manifestations in Iran or Afghanistan, but also subtly in the factory halls and through the bourgeois family order. The international militant women's movement held a successful World Women's Conference in Tunis in September, with the participation of a delegation from International Automotive Workers Coordination.

* A new world peace movement must have the workers as its backbone, preventing countries from being destroyed, and humanity from collapsing. Workers in Italy and Greece went on strike to stop the warmongers and against passing on the costs of war and crisis to workers and their families. As part of International Automotive Workers Coordination on June 24, 2022, a platform was founded to work with the International Anti-Imperialist and Anti-Fascist Front. Revolutionary struggles can bring down the whole rotten imperialist system.

We need a world without exploitation and oppression - towards international workers' unity!