Chile: a new political landscape
MORE AND more people in Chile are getting weary.
While the politicians from the government and opposition parties act in
the service of capitalism, and big business congratulates itself on the
rapid growth of the Chilean economy, life has not improved for the mass
of the workers and their families. Frustration is mounting over the
contradictions facing working people, between the promises and the
reality, concerning casual labour, personal debt, low wages and, now
also, rising inflation.
The workers’ movement has, once again, taken up a
leading position in struggle. There is still a long way to go, but the
bosses cannot just continue making claims about the benevolent nature of
the ‘Chilean model’ without being challenged by the exploited and
socially excluded. Pro-big business commentators speak at length about
economic growth while keeping quiet about environmental destruction, the
growing gap between rich and poor (the top 20% of incomes control 60% of
Chilean GDP), and the worsening quality of public services, education,
health care and housing. The surge in personal indebtedness has grown to
surreal proportions, with financial institutions giving away credit
cards to students and the unemployed.
The mainstream media do not discuss people’s working
conditions. Seventy percent of the workforce labours under uncertain,
casual conditions. As part of an anti-trade union strategy, and to
escape collective negotiations, companies have outsourced work to
subcontractors or created phantom companies. These are attempts to
atomise the workforce. Workers can find their colleagues are technically
employed by a different company. The Chilean labour code prohibits
collective negotiations over working conditions relating to the workers
of two or more different companies. In these circumstances, having joint
trade union negotiations or action by workers employed by a
subcontractor is practically illegal. This leads to the situation where
work colleagues employed by a subcontractor earn less and work in worse
conditions than workers employed by the parent company.
This situation of gross inequality finally led to
explosions this year. More than 5,000 workers for Bosques Arauco, an
enormous company dealing with forest exploitation (a subdivision of
Holding industrial), went on strike and won improved working conditions.
They had to pay a high price for this as their struggle met with violent
repression from the police. One of the workers, Rodrigo Cisternas, a
26-year-old father, was shot dead by the police.
But the Bosques Arauco strike was taken as an
example and followed by subcontracted workers at the Codelco mine. These
workers won the right to collective bargaining after a long and hard
strike. Today, there are many such mobilisations: struggles in which
workers get unionised and organised. Other sectors in struggle include
workers from the construction industry (who work with many
subcontracting workers), the banking sector, and workers in the big
export-oriented agricultural sector. The latter are one of the most
neglected workforces in the Chile.
On top of the immediate work-related exploitation we
have to add the general crisis in housing. Millions of people are at
risk of losing their social housing because they cannot afford to pay
the mortgage. People have had to organise marches and demonstrations to
defend their right to accommodation and prevent banks seizing their
properties and selling them off. Subsistence fishermen, who are
suffering from industrial trawling fleet competition, have organised
demonstrations and faced down police repression to get some emergency
aid from the government. The indigenous people are still the poorest and
most exploited of the country. The Mapuches are struggling to recuperate
their ancestral lands that have been fraudulently seized from them. They
face severe repression and the state has used anti-terrorism laws
against them. Some Mapuche people were given ten-year prison sentences
for burning fields and many regularly face imprisonment on the basis of
made-up charges. At the time of writing, two Mapuche women are on hunger
strike in prison, in an attempt to highlight their plight.
We also have seen the mobilisation of workers and
youth who live in Santiago de Chile, the capital city of six million
inhabitants. They are protesting against the consequences of the huge
‘restructuring’ of public transport, Transantiago. The government
conceded that Transantiago was a disaster, causing increased waiting
times and the disappearance of whole routes. At the same time, we have
heard announcements of more profits for the banks and companies involved
in the contracts for Transantiago.
No surprise then that the trade union federation,
CUT (Central Unitaria de Trabajadores), were forced to call a national
day of mobilisations, on 29 August, because of the pressure of the
rank-and-file union members. Yet CUT’s main leaders are also leading
members of the parties in the Concertación government (the ex-social
democracy Partido Socialista and the Christian democrats of Democracia
Cristiana), or of the Communist Party (PC) which is now negotiating a
pact with the Concertación parties.
The slogans for the demonstration were very general:
‘Against neo-liberalism’, ‘For a social state and solidarity’, ‘Put an
end to exclusion’ (relating to the demand for a change of the law that
would allow the PC to enter parliament). However, many social
organisations, including some sections of the trade union movement,
pushed to make the demands more concrete and precise. Specific issues
were raised: against the hike in bread prices, against the rises of food
staples, for higher wages, for better working conditions, for public
transport, etc. All of these demands were carried on placards and
banners during the demonstration by different local and community
organisations.
It is not the first time the CUT has taken the
initiative for such a mobilisation. In the past, these have been more of
a rallying of forces without any direction or intention to take the
struggle forward. The role of the CUT in this mobilisation was not any
different. There was no meeting or rally and the participants did not
receive clear instructions or a plan of what was going to happen on the
day. The general secretary of the CUT, Martinez, said: "Every member can
do what he or she thinks is best".
But if it was the intention of CUT leaders to have a
little walk around Santiago without any real consequences, they were
mistaken. The mobilisation was used by working people to express their
frustration. The government tried to ban the demonstration but thousands
of people were determined to march. The police attacked the protest and
there were stand-offs with the militarised police and riots – 750 people
were arrested. The police violence was shown on television. Footage
showed an unprovoked police attack on people who were queuing for a bus.
A member of parliament was hit on the head and suffered a fractured
skull, while he was chatting with a police official in charge.
Last year, when 600,000 secondary school students
occupied the schools, marked a turning point. Chile has changed. The way
in which workers have now entered the struggle confirms this. A new
generation is free of the trauma of 1973 – when the elected left
government of Salvador Allende was bloodily overthrown and was followed
by long years of Pinochet dictatorship. They are now on the move and
reconstructing the trade union and social organisations. They are giving
these mass organisations a strong sense of democracy from below and
instilling a distrust of the traditional political parties.
New perspectives have opened up. Recent events show
the potential for the building of democratic trade unions, with
leaderships independent of capitalist state power, and for the
construction of a new workers’ party with a socialist, democratic and
fighting programme.
The workers, poor and youth have learned one
elemental lesson that appeared to have been forgotten: a collective
solution is possible and is the only one open to the mass of the
workers. To bring it about we have to organise and struggle.
Patricio Guzmán
Socialismo Revolucionario (CWI Chile)
www.socialistworld.net (website of the Committee for a Workers'
International)
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