Proposal 1st May Call from the ICG
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- Created: Sunday, 25 April 2021 19:44
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May 1st is the Workers' Day of Struggle, especially in times of the Corona Pandemic. The ICG calls on all miners and their families worldwide to actively participate on 1 May, according to their possibilities. For example, through demonstrations and rallies against passing the burden of the crisis on the workers and the broad masses as well as dismantling civil democratic rights. Worldwide, the numbers of infected people and deaths due to COVID-19 are rising while the crisis management of the governments is failing because they follow the dictates of international monopolies who want to secure their profit.
They want to convince us that the Corona pandemic is the cause of those problems and thus justify the attacks on working and living conditions of the masses. In reality, we have already had a world economic and financial crisis since the middle of 2018, and the Corona pandemic is only adding to it. The international militant miners' coordination is preparing the 3rd International Miners' Conference for 2023 to learn from each other and to advance the global coordination of struggles, as well as the international cooperation of miners throughout the world. So get involved in the preparation and participate. It is we miners as well as our families who are feeling the effects of this most severe global economic and financial crisis since the Second World War. We are also among those who got hit most severely by the half-hearted measures to tackle and control this global Corona pandemic. Among others, the striking miners in Belarus put it in a nutshell: They are on strike for higher wages and better working conditions and they demand the resignation of the government! They continue to fight despite arrests and ill-treatment by the police. In Kazakhstan, miners are also fighting for their trade union rights, raising the question: whose interests is the whole system of power defending? The interests of the whole people or just a handful of rich capitalists? On 'Bloody Sunday', 7 March, trade union activists were shot dead by the police in the Philippines! More than 1100 miners at the Warrior Met Coal Mine in Alabama, U.S.A., went on strike on 1 April against the attempts of their management to further reduce wages and to aggravate working and safety conditions, while top managers at the company have taken bonuses of $ 35,000 in recent weeks. In Colombia, 11 miners have been trapped for days in an illegal gold mine and their families fear for their lives. In Germany, dismissed miners have won financial concessions from the RAG/RAG foundation. (Feel free to add any struggles or protests from your countries that we have not yet covered.) For a future worth living, also and especially with the youth! Only together can we workers triumph over exploitation and oppression!