A Vita-l Victory

As the “official” union-led fightback against austerity slowly falls to pieces, it’s good to take a look at some more successful struggles, as a reminder that we don’t always lose. Ireland’s seen an encouraging amount of workplace occupations recently, with staff at La Senza and Game stores winning concessions after going into occupation. Now it seems like foam packing workers at Vita Cortex have also declared victory after staying in occupation for around 150 days. Hopefully the Lagan brick workers will see a similar win soon. Sensibly, although a deal has been agreed, the Vita Cortex workers are planning on continuing the occupation for another two weeks to make sure they actually get the money, a good way to avoid the kind of dirty tricks KMPG have tried to play on the La Senza workers. If you were judging the state of the class struggle by what the unions get up to, it’d be easy to conclude that we always lose every time so there’s no point even trying, but the wave of Irish workplace occupations are a potent reminder of how much power we really have. But as encouraging as they are, these kind of cases are still the exception, not the rule – the task ahead of us is still to create a culture where effective grassroots direct action is the norm, and tactics like lobbying MPs and futile one-day strikes are the strange, marginalised ideas.
Another of the most inspiring struggles going on right now is the ongoing Quebec student strike, but as I’ve said before, I’m not really following that closely enough to be able to cover it properly. Luckily, News from the 2012 Quebec student general strike is a handy resource that should keep you up to date with the latest developments over there.
Finally, two quick updates on state repression: 60 people have been arrested in a wave of raids against anarchists in Turkey, and the US-based Workers Solidarity Alliance are campaigning for the freedom of Julio Rodriguez, an anarchist comrade currently being held by the immigration services.