(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #247 - FAU (Uruguay):
Revolutionaries in the heart struggles (fr, it, pt) [machine
translation]
FAU is a well established organization in many unions. Illustration with Suatt, the taxis
and telephone operators. ---- Ten Years Ignacio and Alvaro are unionized in Suatt
(Sindicato Unico de automoviles con taximetro Telefonistas y[1]), ten years they each lead
the same taxi. ---- The SUATT leads many struggles for a salary based on eight hours per
day and not on productivity that leads drivers to drive for twelve or thirteen hours a day
to have a decent salary. But the union also is campaigning for these wage increases are
paid by employers, and not by the users through higher prices. Transportation must be at
the service of the population and thus at prices accessible to all. ---- A change society
against violence ---- Insecurity is a daily concern for those workers who move in all
neighborhoods at all hours of the day and night, sometimes with significant amounts: in
Montevideo, eight drivers have already been murdered. The Suatt not mistaken target,
violence is a result of unemployment and social injustice to be answered by a change in
society and not by measures called "safe".
And all the unions in Uruguay, Suatt is affiliated with the only union confederation,
PIT-CNT (Plenary Intersindical de Trabajadores - Convención Nacional de Trabajadores)[2].
Since the victory of the Frente Amplio[3], the PIT-CNT is the transmission belt of the
government "left", as in Brazil since the CUT that of PT.
However, creating another trade union center they consider inappropriate or even
"dangerous." It must be said that ten years of field work, basic unionism did their
anarchosyndicalist list has the majority of seats in the union secretariat. For as often
called a little faster "one union," there during both internal union elections and for
those of delegates in companies, several lists, guidelines and diverse union practices.
One of the seats of the union office is occupied by a comrade telephone operators, which
was not a foregone conclusion! All taxi drivers employed or own their vehicles are male,
all female operators. Beyond salary ancestral inequality, function, progress, etc.,
between men and women, is grafted in this area that the operators are "warm office" with
the boss. They were perceived by drivers as "collaborators" to the bosses of the service,
making never strike and at zero rates of unionization.
A fierce pedagogy with operators but also from the drivers was required for a class
consciousness can occur and a woman to be elected to the secretariat.
Within the PIT-CNT, the Suatt part of the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores del Transporte y
Obreros[4] (Unott), which sometimes makes common actions to all workers of transport, but
on a fairly moderate line. The Suatt is not the only union where members of the FAU have
some influence; this is not an anarcho-syndicalist union; but it illustrates daily by its
demands, its struggles and its propaganda, one of the fronts through which the libertarian
FAU can weigh in Uruguayan social movement of today.
Abóbora (Playa Verde)
[1] Single Union of cars with a taximeter ("Taxi") and telephone operators.
[2] Inter Plenary of Workers - National Convention of Workers. Its current name comes from
a part of the National Convention of Workers (CNT) founded in 1964 and banned after the
coup of 27 June 1973, on the other hand of the Inter Plenary of Workers (PIT), created in
1982, when the military junta gave a relative liberalization of the regime. On 1 May 1984
the Confederation resumed its original name CNT, without abandoning the acronym PIT. The
PIT-CNT now has 64 union federations, with 200,000 affiliated es.
[3] The Broad Front (Frente Amplio in Spanish) is a Uruguayan political movement founded
in 1971, bringing together the Christian Democratic Party and the Communist Party in East
Revolutionary Movement (MRO). He was soon joined by the March 26 Movement, founded by the
Tupamaros. Of course, it was banned during the dictatorship. After the massive success of
2004, which led to the presidency Tabaré Vázquez, the Broad Front has again won the 2009
elections (Pepe Mujica became President) and 2014 (return Tabaré Vazquez).
[4] National Union of Workers and transport workers.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?FAU-Revolutionnaires-au-coeur-des
