(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #251 - Switzerland:
"Peace of labor" or social war? (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
The weakness of social conflicts can not hide the violence with which the Swiss Employers
attacks on workers' rights, with the complicity of yellow unions. Illustrations in the
rail and the Post Office. ---- In Switzerland, the "labor peace" exists since 1937. It is
formalized by agreements between employers and trade unions, through which they give up
the strike in exchange for the establishment of collective agreements! Nearly a century
later, strikes remain scarce, renewable movements are exceptional. The few independent
unions that exist (SOUTH Vaud, Autonomous Union of Postal Workers) and oppositional
activists teams within the structures of the Swiss Trade Union, offer an alternative to
the institutional trade unions, but the context makes it difficult development. The Swiss
trade union bureaucracy continues to wreak havoc; evidenced by two recent agreements, one
in the Federal Railways (SBB) and the other at the Post Office.
The Union of Swiss railway (SEV) has signed an agreement that is a betrayal of the
interests of workers. As elsewhere, the employers in their pockets, fatten their friends
and cry from the staff because "times are hard", "is the crisis," "there is no money"...
To CFF, it took the form of blackmail in the future of the pension fund. The company will
pay 690 million Swiss francs to the body (but after all it is only part of what is stolen
from the Swiss railway workers and railway workers for years, through wages too low and
ever-increasing productivity ).
Capital safeguard clause
In "exchange", the union accepted the wage freeze until 2020, removing one day off per
year until 2018, a decrease in pension! As the bosses do not get enough, they also got a
"safeguard clause (!!!)" indicating that in case of "difficult economic situation", the
contractual provisions of the regulatory work will suspended!
All that was signed by the "Union" SEV, member of the Swiss Federation of Trade Unions
(USS), the same one that in the historic strike (victorious) thirty-three days of the
workshop comrades Bellinzona in 2008, was conspicuous by its uselessness, conversely the
local inter-union tool built on site and especially the union section to democratic
practice and exemplary offensive. At the Post, the new collective agreement is a disaster.
The Autonomous Union of Postal Workers summarizes some of the damage:
- Sixty-eight days Loss leave on a career of twenty-five years.
- Removed some daily breaks.
- Disappearance of automatic increases that existed during the first twelve years of service.
- Exclusion of a large number of wage earners out of the collective agreement.
- Enhanced flexibility, employers may reduce working hours by 20%.
- Removal of the right to reinstatement for unfair dismissal judged (this is particularly
staff representatives who, in fact, have more protection).
- Disappearance of an allowance, blocking some wages, wage inequality between services.
And a half million Swiss francs paid annually unions signed this kind of agreement may
explain the choice of Syndicom Union (USS)!
These two illustrations of the union bureaucracy of the havoc they encourage the Swiss
union to coordinate, beyond any political affiliation of each other, to get rid of the
puppets who claim to represent the workers of this country and rebuild union movement
enrolling in the class struggle? This is probably one of the necessities to end this
pseudo-peace at the service of big business.
Christian (G Transcom)
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Suisse-Paix-du-travail-ou-guerre
