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First of May 2013: The Emancipation of the Workers must be the task of the Working-class itself!

The origin of May Day dates back to the United States on May 1st 1886 when a strike was launched in support of the 8 hour day. During this campaign a bomb was thrown at a demonstration in Chicago, the police arrested a number of anarchists who had been prominent in the struggle for the 8 hour day.

The arrested men were clearly innocent, but four were executed by the state while another died in his cell allegedly committing suicide. The execution of the four men, who became known as the Haymarket Martyrs, sparked a mass working class protest across the world that lead to May 1st being declared international workers day in commemoration of the sacrifice of the four murdered men.

On this May Day let us then not just remember the sacrifice of the Haymarket Martyrs, but also celebrate the Internationalism of the early workers movement that led to the mass protest against the execution of the four men.

The message of May Day is that Capitalism is a worldwide system that has to be fought by the international working class. And that working class struggle must go beyond national borders and confront the capitalist enemy directly on an international scale.

And as we approach this May Day, the need for coordinated international working class action against capitalism has never been greater. Capitalism as a global system remains in the grip of crisis that it is seeking to overcome by attacking the working class. In country after country governments are driving down wages and working conditions and throws people into unemployment in an attempt to boost the ailing capitalist system. The capitalist rule is “expand or die”, and the crisis is used as a pretext for slashing public services. In fact this is an expansion for opening of markets and capital for private corporations.

IWA-Action Days on April 29, 30 and May 1

The International Workers Association (IWA) organizes Action Days on April 29, 30 and May 1. The Actions are International and against Capitalist Austerity Measures, Exploitation, and Oppression with focus on Global, Regional and Local issues/ work conflicts etc. The International Workers Association (IWA) is convinced that workers must fight against the Capitalist Austerity Measures, Exploitation, and Oppression by Direct Actions and International Solidarity. The IWA Sections are run by the workers themselves and without paid “functionaries", they do not class collaborate and won`t receive financial subsidies from the capitalists and the state.

The only path to emancipation for us as workers is to take control of our own struggle: A struggle that is directed against and outside of class collaborationist structures and that through Direct Action and Solidarity confronts and defeats Capitalism and establishes Libertarian Communism!

Long live workers International Solidarity!
Long live the IWA and Anarchosyndicalism!

Oslo, April 10- 2013
IWA - Secretariat

The Multinational Alstom plans to Fire 373 Employees and Close 3 Plants in Spain

Call for International Solidarity.

Alstom is a French company and world leader in the infrastructure of energy generation and transmission and railway transport. The company is divided into five sectors: turbo generator systems, environment,services, transport and shipbuilding. It is present in about 100 countries in the world and has been involved in the generation and transmission of energy and railway transport in all of Spain since 1989.

In 2007 Alstom acquired the Spanish company Ecotecnia Energías Renovables S.L. with its technological patent and production plants and created Alstom Wind.

Alstom Wind in España is formed by the blobal technological center I+D in Barcelona, the turbine plant in Buñuel (Navarra), the tower construction plant in Coreses (Zamora), two electric component plants in As Somozas (A Corunha) and the maintenance of wind farms.

On March 26, 2013 Alstom presented a reconstruction plan that would effect 373 employees in all the centers of production in Alstom Wind España and would close three plants: the 2 factories in As Somozas and the ones in Coreses.

Statement and denouncement of the attacks against a member of the KRAS-IWA from the so-called MPST group

The comrade was attacked in Moscow on March 28 by a group of National-”Anarchists” from so-called MPST. The MPST is according to our sister organization the KRAS, known with their nationalist etnicist statements and writings; they proclaim the “preservation of ethnic identity”, declaim against the mixture of people and against the synthesis of cultures, and declare that the cosmopolitism is a “devil incarnated of capitalism”. Moreover, one of the leaders of this group confessed that he agreed during his interrogation in police to inform the authorities about social movements.

This is not the first time that members of MPST have attacked several political opponents inclusive anarchists physically. In January, they threatened also the libertarian LGBT activists. MPST spoke against homosexuality and was demanding that LGBT should not raise their "rainbow" flag in anarchist demonstrations. After this “discussions”, the LGBT activist were in fact attacked during one libertarian manifestation.

The International Workers Association (IWA) by its Secretariat denounces the fascist and nationalist aggressors and provocateurs of MPST. The Secretariat and the Sections and Friends of the IWA worldwide will inform all libertarian organization in the world with whom the MPST have contact, and call for a boycott not only of the MPST, but any group and any libertarian activist from the former "Soviet Union", which don`t condemn this group, such acts and those who perpetrate them!

Oslo, April 3- 2013
IWA- Secretariat

ZSP Days of Action Related to Housing

From March 21-28, IWA sections participated in actions related to housing. ZSP organized various actions in Warsaw, related to ongoing struggles, against
gentrification and against attacks on working class and poor people on the part of those profiting from their dislocation: investors and politicians.

Starting from March 21, we reactivated the Okrzejowki Brigades. These Brigades were called into existence at the end of 2011 to patrol the Praga neighbourhood in Warsaw
against arson attacks by gentrifiers and to build community self-defense. They were successful and for over one year the attacks of the gentrifiers stopped. After a new
wave of arson attacks against poor people in areas attractive for developers, the ZSP Warsaw reactivated the brigades.

On March 23, there was a protest related to the extreme negligence of the city and the firms building a metro line in this same neighbourhood. Due to a lack of any safety
measures, buildings are suffering great damage and falling. People have been forced out of their homes; others are fighting for protection from the consortium that refuses to provide any. The office of ZSP is right on the street where the metro is being built and it is likely that the building across the street will be evacuated. Despite the freezing
cold, neighbours came to speak out against this situation. All condemned the criminal behaviour of the city and consortium and expressed the opinion that they were
intentionally letting the construction ruin one of the only areas of the city which survived the Nazi decimation in order to clear the terrain for the future profits of
developers.

Finally, all during the week, we will be going around the neighbourhood, leafleting postering and continuing with other actions against gentrification and for community
direct action and self-defense, calling for popular assemblies and popular control of public housing.

REQUEST FOR SUPPORT AND ACTION IN SOLIDARITY WITH WORKERS OF IBERIA

The Spanish airline Iberia is laying off 3807 workers and cutting wages between 20-40%. Days off and vacations will be significantly reduced, amongst other rights as well. This will allow to sell off Iberia workers very cheaply in the near future.

This is the reason why we are have been on strike for 10 days (we already went on strike for 5 days in February). The CNT union section calls for all possible measures to put Iberia under pressure: leaflets, grafittis, pickets, sits-in. They shall take place wherever Iberia is present: airports, offices in the cities... We aim to combine all our forces internationally to stop the plans of dismantling the airline.

Also at official offices of Spain and the airlines British Airways (http://www.britishairways.com/travel/ctclist/public/en_gb)

We would appreciate it, if you sent us pictures and videos of your actions.

Thank you very much in advance. All our best wishes.

CNT Union Section in Iberia

More information:

https://iwa-ait.org/es/content/strike-and-mobilizations-iberia-worker...

See article in External Bulletin: https://iwa-ait.org/content/iwa-external-bulletin-4

http://iberia.cnt.es/secciones-sindicales/iberia/111-que-esta-pasando-en...

http://iberia.cnt.es/

IWA External Bulletin 4

Issue 4 of the bulletin has articles about the IWA Plenary in Modena, the strike of workers from USI-AIT at San Rafaele hospital in Milan, information about the activities of KRAS, PA and ZSP, CNT actions at Telepizza,, the end of the strike at Casa de les Moinges residence, information about the IMESAPI workers' strike in Spain, a history of the CNT union in Iberia airlines, a history of the Portguese CGT and the foundation of the IWA and more!

https://iwa-ait.org/content/iwa-external-bulletin-4

The CNT accuses the government of practicing the politics of intentionally destroying employment and increasing unemployment

The anarchosyndicalist union considers that the unemployment data, released yesterday, are the desired result of the politics of cuts and dismissals made by different governments and through European institutions.

CNT believes that the EPA data, released yesterday, show the effects of the actual policies being promoted, and that produces the desired result of the multiplication of layoffs and the systematic destruction of jobs. The anarchosyndicalist union claims that the official discourse on job creation is simply a justification for more cuts in workers' rights, casualization and the dismantling of public services and policies in favor of the interests of management and banks.

For the CNT, 6 million unemployed people only confirms the irrational character of an economic system which prioritizes benefits for the bosses and banks as opposed to the necessities and welfare of society. An economic system which neglects necessities such as education, health care, care professions, while people with the capacity, will and knowledge to satisfy these needs are left without resources.

CNT accuses the bosses and the government of failing to stop to promote unemployment as a way to impose worse salaries, more precarious working conditions and to roll back decades of workers' struggle, spreading fear amongst the working class.

The CNT has called for a day of action on February 15 in which it calls on unemployed workers to participate since it considers that nothing can be expected of governments, for which work serves only as a slogan for electoral campaigns and publicity. Similarly, for anarchosyndicalist, we can expect little or nothing from institutional unionism, accomplices in reduction plans and layoffs, which, for years, have made unemployment a business together with the bosses, through subsidies for the scam of job training and orientation.

Solidarity with the struggle of the workers at San Raffaele Hospital (Milan)

Dear comrades, as you already know the Italian government, with the behalf of the financial powers, is going on with the destruction of the welfare state, one of the objective of this campaign is the health assistance. Our comrades that work in the San Raffaele Hospital, together with other unions, are striking to protest against the firing of 244 workers and the cancellation of the contract's accord previously obtained, and among other things, Graziella (USI's delegate) and Daniela have went on the roof of the hospital to give more visibility to the protest.

To sustain this struggle the San Raffaele's workers are daily engaged in strike and protest (the march held in Milan the 24th of October and the 14th of November were both really important) obstruction of highway, demonstrations in front of the Regional administrative palace and the Municipal administrative palace, protest held in front of important mass media building and most of all the permanent protest at the main entrance of the hospital, where a lot of people is giving solidarity to workers. On the same day that the two comrades went on the roof, about fifty workers occupied the Direction. They were cleared away by the police, simultaneously the delegates requested to workers to hang up the sheets out of the windows of the hospital to show that the protest was going on, sending a powerful image towards the outside. The workers are nowadays aware that if this attack to worker´s rights will pass it will be just the first action of a chain, that in the future many other contracts will be changed with worse conditions of work and that the first victim, after the workers themselves, will be each person that needs public health assistance.

Report from the IWA-Plenary in Modena November 23-25 and the Centenary of the USI-AIT

Comrades attended Modena from Brazil, France, Great Britain, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, and Spain and the Plenary was excellently organized by the USI-AIT. On Saturday evening the Centenary of the USI-AIT was celebrated by a demonstration, speeches and with events in the evening as Modena is the place in which the USI was founded hundred years ago. Both the Plenary and the Centenary was held in a very comradely spirit!

There has in the period since the last IWA Plenary in Warsaw in the end of October 2011 to the Modena Plenary, not only been austerity measures and cuts, but also an ideological campaign against the workers. This campaign tries to convince working people that the austerity and crisis is ‘their fault’ and not the reckless speculation and deregulation of the world economy. The “solution” of the states and capitalists is to dictate the workers to accept what they call “the logic of the market” and austerity measures and attacks are presented as “financial” necessities and “laws”.

The websites of the Sections, the IWA website and IWA`s External Bulletin show that the IWA and its Sections and Friends day by day are increasing their mobilizations, presence, activities and direct actions: It has in these eleven months since the last Plenary been IWA Days of actions against Austerity measures, exploitation and oppression from March 29 to 31, a General Strike in Spain March 29 and in Spain and Portugal etc. on November 14 that were support by the Sections, and a lot of Urgent actions in support of workers in conflict!

A referendum in the IWA in the end of January 2012 that the next Plenary should discuss and decide about further mobilizations. Items for discussion in the Plenary in Modena were: Assessment of past mobilizations. These included IWA Days of Actions, international solidarity calls or other mobilizations the Sections have taken part in. Strategic value of international mobilizations and how to pick potential partners.

The Plenary decided International Days of Action against job cuts and dismissals and in support of unemployed people, Days of Action related to housing and new International Days of Action against austerity measures, exploitation and oppression. It will also be actions against the destruction of a Spanish Cemetery in Brazil. All the actions will be announced in good time before they will be put into practice.

Asociación Internacional de los Trabajadores

International Workers Association