FOR A GENERAL STRIKE TO DEFEAT SLAVE WAGES AND AUSTERITY
The following is reprinted from our comrades of the Revolutionary Workers Group of Zimbabwe (Section of the International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency-ILTT):
Teachers in Zimbabwe have started a process that can result in a historic win against the government and the bourgeoisie. It is crucial that other workers join now. The coming week will be crucial and decisive in the class warfare between the government and teachers. On Monday the 7th of February teachers embarked on a collective job action by withdrawing their services and protesting against the poor salaries as well as the deteriorating conditions of work and living. They are earning an average of 24000 Zimbabwean Dollars (ZWL) a month which translates to about 200 United States Dollars (USD) and 100 USD using the formal and parallel market exchange rates respectively.
Teachers are demanding the restoration of their salaries to the pre-October 2018 figure of 540 USD. This has been necessitated by the objective material and economic conditions as well as the arrogance, delaying tactics and intransigence of the employer in dealing with the issue of a living wage and better working conditions. Despite promises to sit down with the teachers government, as usual, proceeded to open schools without offering anything to the poverty stricken teachers who have been reduced to professional paupers.
This past week saw the job action starting on a high note with many schools failing to open including the rural ones. On the second day, Tuesday, many teachers had joined the action which is being coordinated by the Federation of Zimbabwe Educators Unions (FOZEU), a federation of teachers. Even the traditionally conservative and sell-out leaders of the Zimbabwe Teachers Association (ZIMTA) were forced to act demanding that teachers should be paid 671 USD. The association of school heads, ZINUSH, is also calling for the restoration of teachers’ salaries and its member are also part of the collective job action. As was to be expected the government, through its various mouth pieces, initially claimed that the job action had been a failure as most schools were operating and a majority of teachers were at work. This was however exposed by the threats to dismiss and discipline those who were not at work.
On Wednesday, after realising the growing momentum of the job action and in cohorts with the ZIMTA leadership, government offered teachers an array of meaningless monetary and non-monetary offers which were quickly and broadly rejected by teachers as not anyway near their main demand. All the attempts to sanitise this mockery fell flat and government then recklessly went for the jugular, on Thursday, of illegally and unprocedurally suspending all teachers not at work for three months as investigations into misconduct took place. Teachers remained firm and resolute. On Friday government then met the APEX, a moribund body pretending to be representing all civil servants, under the auspices of the National Joint Negotiating Council (NJNC), a begging platform! The outcome was a total circus with nothing tangible but mere twisting and turning of figures and words.
What is clear now is that government is in a corner and is desperate to stop the job action through empty promises, dividing the workers and using high handed tactics such as suspensions. The real possibility of the action spreading to others sectors of the civil service especially the nurses is a gory nightmare for the government and a necessity for the working class in Zimbabwe. Nurses issued a powerful solidarity statement in support of the teachers, highlighting their common problems and demands as well as calling on the government to resolve the wages issue or face a united teacher-nurse onslaught. The action by teachers are a replica of the struggles being waged by the working and poor masses globally against the ravaging effects of capitalism and imperialism in its terminal and destructive phase.
ZIMTA is facing an existential threat that can result in a massive exodus of members, militant takeover or radical split. Its membership has shifted to the younger generation with no ties to the historical bond between the union and the ruling party. The dire situation on the ground gives no room for opportunism and piece meal reforms. The neo liberal policies of the second republic have attacked workers in the public and private sectors alike whilst capitalists make massive profits even in Covid 19 times and government is recording yearly budget surpluses. Workers are bearing the brunt and cannot take it anymore.
The Revolutionary Workers Group of Zimbabwe (RWG-Z) stands in solidarity with the teachers and their unions during these decisive times for the working class in Zimbabwe. RWG-Z is a revolutionary organisation with sister organisations in the USA, New Zealand and Brazil organised under the International Leninist Trotskyist Tendency (ILTT). We support the call for a living wage and better working conditions. We demand the lifting of the purported suspensions of teachers. We applaud all organisations and unions who have offered solidarity to the teachers. Solidarity is a key ingredient in class struggle and we call on regional and international unions and working class organisations to offer solidarity and support at this critical juncture.
We further call upon the teachers to remain firm as we enter the second week. But for this to be effective other public service workers must join in now to form a strong united front against the government and defeat its pro austerity drive that is only benefiting local capitalists and imperialism. More crucially it is high time that federations and unions in the private sector also join in and transform the action into a massive and indefinite general strike which alone is the only tool that can win workers their demands.
-For a living Wage! Workers fight for a living wage and better working conditions through mass action controlled by ordinary workers!
-Lift the suspensions on teachers now!
-Against unemployment and destitution we demand a sliding scale of working hours to provide decent jobs for all through massive public works programs to provide housing, education and medical care for all!
-Against the ever rising prices and inflation we demand a sliding scale of wages!
-For free, comprehensive and secular education for all!
-For free quality health for all!
-Workers take back your unions!
-Organise the unorganised! Form unions of the unemployed as fully affiliated unions!
-Government and city municipalities stop the attack on the vendors!
-Militant workers to form class struggle caucuses in the unions to fight for this program!
-Workers form strike committees to lead the resistance to the growing attacks on the wages and working conditions of the poor and the livelihood of the majority poor!
-Workers form workers defence guards for defence against state violence!
-A national strike committee to organise and plan for a general strike!
-For a workers government on the basis of the armed people to implement decisions that benefit the workers and the poor!
-Nationalisation of all companies without indemnification to the big shareholders under workers control!
-Land to be distributed to all poor peasants together with a state bank to provide inputs to all small farmers!
-A workers state that defends workers, peasants and the poor masses against the local and foreign capitalists!
-An African socialist revolution as part of the international revolution that alone can guarantee a better life for all!
-A new WORLD PARTY of socialist revolution based on the TRANSITIONAL PROGRAM of 1938 to lead the revolution to end capitalism and open the road to socialism!
13 February 2022
