nternational Appeal for Nov. Rall

September 2013

International Appeal for Nov. Rally

Dear Friends all over the world,

On Sunday, November 3, we hold our biggest annual rally with participation of labor unions and workers from all across the country. And on the following Monday, we have an international labor solidarity rally together with our friends from around the world.

We wholeheartedly ask you to attend the both rallies.

Neoliberal assaults are raging around the world, depriving workers of every sort of right and sucking their blood. Deregulation, privatization, outsourcing and casualization of workers, which sets capital free from all the restrictions imposed on them by labor laws, are the nuts and bolts of the assaults.

In Japan, we are faced with a storm of “Abenomics”—the Abe Administration’s reckless policy of bottomless quantitative monetary easing and public spending, wholesale privatization and destruction of employment. Abe’s agenda includes turning 90 % of the existing workers into casual labor and complete dismantlement of healthcare, education, pension and social security systems. Capitalism in its terminal stage with unbearable burden of surplus capital/surplus productive forces is desperately clinging to such brutal but haphazard approach, which is bound to be a fiasco.

Meanwhile, we have eventually achieved a historic breakthrough in our fight against the Division and Privatization of Japan National Railways in 1987, which had made the first step in Japan for neoliberal assaults as described above. Our decades long struggle succeeded in forcing even the reactionary court to admit that the “fire all at once and re-hire after screening” method of the JNR privatization scheme constituted an unfair labor practice by the government; the lies and frauds of the privatization of JNR was finally and definitely exposed to the whole public.

It is the common struggle for all workers of the world to fight against deregulation, privatization, outsourcing and casualization.

In South Korea, large-scale protest rallies of hundreds of thousands of people are now repeatedly held against the intervention by National Intelligence Service (NIS) in the last presidential election. Closely connected with this movement, the struggle against massive layoffs, casualization and privatization has grown into a big social movement under the leadership of Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and Korean Railway Workers’ Union (KRWU).

In the United States, locals of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in the West Coast are now under full-scale union busting. Therein Japanese major trading companies are taking the lead in attacking these local unions. The families and communities have joined together with ILWU members in developing powerful protest actions. Under such circumstances, rebuilding American labor movement has started.
On August 29, American fast-food workers kicked off a day of record-scale coordinated strikes in more than 60 cities nationwide demanding higher wages and the right to organize.

Meanwhile, the European Union (EU) is facing an imminent danger of break-up. The austerity package put forth by the EU and the IMF in face of the global economic crisis has been met with mounting anger of the Greek people expressed in repeated massive demonstrations nationwide. This movement developed into individual countries across the EU culminated in November international solidarity general strike last year and then followed by May Day protests across Europe this year.

The workers of the BRICS countries and also of Egypt, Philippines, Turkey and so on, who face bitter neoliberal offensive, are fighting for their existence demanding, “Let us live!” This struggle is now taking the world by storm.

Crucial problem for us all is the task of labor unions as a major force to confront imperialist attack. What is needed is to establish class struggle labor union in all the workplaces and to overcome existing miserable situation of labor unions through liberating ourselves from the fetter of system-friendly labor unions. Our fundamental and universal task is to carry out the most “natural” and difficult work: to cling to principles and expand class unity.

Abe administration shamelessly pretends to be not at all guilty for leaking huge volume of contaminated water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant into the Pacific, keeps accumulation of weapon-grade plutonium and is carrying out top sales of nuclear plant package to various parts of the world as a “merchant of death”.

These diabolic and criminal deeds of Abe administration shall be definitely condemned and crushed by the solidarity of working people all over the world with anti-nuke brothers and sisters in Gorleben, Germany together with angry people in Fukushima, workers exposed to nuclear radiation and fighting workers all over Japan.

We, three labor unions, Doro-Chiba, Kan-Nama and Minato-Godo, and Nation-wide Movement of National Railway Struggle, officially ask all of you fighting brothers and sisters of the whole world to join us in the All-Japan Workers Rally on November 3, sponsored by these organizations. And we would be very grateful for you, if you could endorse our rally, make signature and send us solidarity greetings. Attached is the paper.

On the following November 4, International Workers Solidarity Rally will be held to raise angry voices of working people of the whole world. You are also earnestly expected to attend it.

As for the expenditure during your stay in Japan, including the hotel charges, will be covered by us. We are waiting for your positive response.

September 2013
Yasuhiro Tanaka, President of Doro-Chiba
Hiroyuki Yamamoto, General Secretary of International Labor Solidarity Committee of Doro-Chiba