Irish Left With Ukraine – Neither Moscow nor Washington

Welcome to the May-June 2024 issue of the European Network for Solidarity with Ukraine’s (ENSU) trade union newsletter.
We feature the background to the humiliating ‘success’ of the Federation of Free Trade Unions of Russia in obtaining, by the narrowest possible margin, a seat on the Governing Body of the International Labour Organisation.
Updates on important worker and community struggles in Ukraine include an informative article on how women are undertaking voluntary military training, some with an eye to joining the army.
A statement by Social Movement (Sotsialnyi Rukh) scores the viewpoint of Daryna Marchak (First Deputy Minister of Social Policy) that to escape poverty, Ukrainians just need to work longer.
In our section on solidarity, we highlight the close ties between Norway’s trade union confederation (LO) and its Ukrainian sister organisations and the pledges that the Ukrainian solidarity movement in England, Wales and Scotland is asking candidates in the forthcoming British general election election to sign.

Here is a link to the full bulletin :

Bulletin Editorial

After European Union (EU) elections: The struggle for a Ukrainian victory and for social justice must go hand in hand

The results of the June 9 elections to the European parliament give rise to different analyses that the trade union movement needs to discuss seriously. We see a surge of the far right in the core countries of the European Union (EU), along with an advance for the mainstream right across the whole EU.

The social-democratic vote recedes slightly but holds (with the important exception of Germany). The same is true of the vote to its left. But there is a decline of the green parties, which have at times been allies of the left on important issues. The liberals have suffered the most, overtaken by the right and extreme right, most dramatically in France.

The tide is clearly right-wing, conservative in social policies and backward in labour rights, democratic rights and environment. The result has already produced the first earthquakes. In France Macron’s calling of early elections has triggered the rebirth of a popular front of left forces; in Spain the third deputy prime minister Yolanda Díaz has resigned as leader of left coalition Sumar.

Esther Lynch, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation(ETUC), pointed out before the elections that “the leaders of the extreme right offer no solutions to low wages, long hours or poor working conditions. Instead, they focus on divisive rhetoric and fear, which distract from the need for urgent social justice, affordable housing, fair wages and better working conditions.” She concluded: “Trade unions will not be fooled or intimidated.”

Our tasks

How should the trade union movement then react to the results of June 9? How should these results influence our solidarity with Ukraine’s workers and their organisations?

Well, it is time to move from words to deeds. Because if we don’t act, our economic and financial overlords—the warring multinational corporations and the states that back them—will increasingly look to authoritarian, anti-democratic “solutions” like those offered by Milei in Argentina. Along that path the organised working class, together with the millions of poor people that depends on it, loses most.

Let’s never forget that these authoritarian “solutions” of the far right in government have in Putin’s Russia a real champion. As in Russia the corrupt merchants of hate need to tame all independent trade union power as first step in helping their capitalists regain the upper hand in the global war for markets and resources (including cheap and docile labour).

However, the threat to labour and Ukraine doesn’t end here, nor in the influence the policies of the far right are already having on the mainstream conservative right and the liberal “centre” (as in their consensus for a fortress Europe hostile to refugees).

Nor in what could happen if Trump wins November’s US presidential election and strikes a deal to dismember Ukraine with Putin.

Even Ukraine’s just defensive war, which enjoys broad majority support among the peoples of Europe, is presented by the mainstream right as an argument for “social adjustment”—austerity.

Winning the battle for hearts and minds

It is here that the organised labour movement must now go on the offensive. It must show that the defence of Ukraine, including desperately needed military aid, does

not mean that social expenditure has to be sacrificed to finance military budgets.

Here’s how.

Countries Can Send Unused Weaponry to Ukraine

Firstly, countries can simply send unused weaponry to Ukraine, as Irish member of parliament Cathal Berry proposed in 2022. and as Denmark is doing with 19 F-16 jets. MPs in solidarity with Ukraine in the British parliament have also proposed that military equipment marked for replacement be donated to Ukraine instead of sold off.

Stop Weapons Exp[orts to israel and Saudi Arabia – Priortitise Defence of Ukraine

Secondly, as the declaration of the trade unionists and social activists of Kryvyi Rih makes clear, the governments of the countries backing Ukraine have a policy choice: they can “stop weapon exports to third countries [like Israel for its war on Gaza or Saudi Arabia for its war in Yemen] and prioritise the supply of arms and ammunition necessary right now for defence to Ukraine”.

Help Ukraine Expel the Foreign Invader With Surcharge on the Richest

Thirdly, if there truly is no option but to increase defence budgets to help Ukraine expel the Russian invader, they can be funded by increased taxation of those who can afford it. That tax income, maybe in the form of a special surcharge on the richest, could be used to directly fund that expenditure or to pay off any increased debt incurred to finance it.

Confront False Argument : “more guns mean less butter”

If the trade union movement does not aggressively expose the false argument that “more guns mean less butter” it will leave working people vulnerable to the blackmailing arguments of friends and appeasers of Putin and of the false “friends of Ukraine”. This last group is most anxious to exploit the Russian invasion to remilitarise Europe, turn the war into lucrative business for high finance and arms dealers, and lock in the NATO alliance as “indispensable” protection for democratic rights.

The trade union movement has three, indissolubly linked, priorities: defence of Ukraine and its workers, who suffer on the frontline and in their neighbourhoods and cities; defence of working-class interests against Ukraine’s oligarchs; and defence of the working conditions and social rights of all working people.

The prompt reaction of France’s interunion (Intersyndicale) alliance to the threat of a far-right victory in the legislative elections called by Macron, which follows on its previous declaration of solidarity with Ukraine’s workers and unions, shows how organised labour should combine its responsibilities to working people at home and abroad.

We trade unionists must speak out against Russia’s criminal war, as our Ukrainian sisters and brothers are urging us to do: if it succeeds, the rights of the working people of Ukraine will be destroyed, as those who survive under Russian occupation in the occupied territories can painfully testify.

But we also cannot stay silent about Zelensky’s anti-labour policies, that replace worker protection with deregulation and support the interests of oligarchs old and new. We must try to unite all aspects of the liberating struggle Ukraine is waging and on the outcome of which the future of Europe also depends.

Is it democracy to accept the invasion and dismemberment of a sovereign country by an imperialist neighbour? Is it democracy to accept that a “trade union” like the Federation of Free Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR), operating on the back of war criminal Putin’s invasion, supplants the real Ukrainian trade unions in the occupied territories, participates in the repression and justifies Putin?

The result of the elections for the worker representatives on the Governing Board of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) should give us hope. For the first time in the history of the ILO, a union representative proposed, from the Russian FNPR, was almost not elected. A near majority of delegates, North and South, just didn’t want Putin’s man (see full coverage on pages 5 to 13).

Democracy is in danger all over Europe.

The greatest of these would be Putin’s victory. We trade unionists cannot stand by, watch this corpse walk past our door and pretend it doesn’t matter. The rights of millions are at stake. We must react.

And there is still time.

Alfons Bech

ENSU trade union coordinator

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In Ukraine, women are taking their defence and that of the country into their own hands

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