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03/04/2012
The fight of the port workers of Trípoli
Long live the fight of the Tripoli dock workers!
The Libyan working class starts to uprise against the NTC and the chief autonomist bourgeoisie, as it is the case of the heroic Tripoli port workers that for three months they have carried on a general strike for their fair demands and set up their factory committies and armed strike pickets.
The workers and socialist revolution that started giving new steps forward. They must double them developing the self organization of the working class and the exploited ones, alongside the militias, breaking the NTC and the imperialism policy that seeks to prevent the development of the masses dual power, to drive the revolution to the triumph imposing the power of the Libyan working class and exploited ones.
This is the fight to stop the NTC, servant of imperialism, with their Ghadafy politicians and generals from disarming, co-opting and corrupting layers of the militias. Their aim is to disarm the masses. They tried to do it first with an ultimatum so that the masses get disarmed as very late on 20th of December. But the heroic Libyan masses refused to disarm themselves. That is why, the NTC is trying to co-opt and corrupt layers of the militias, giving different kind of compensations at each militiaman and offering a wage of U$S 500 for anyone who is willing to make a military guard one day per week, with the aim to rebuild an army under the command of the Khadafy officers of the NTC and advance in defeating the dual power that the armed masses conquered all around Libya.
It is necessary to convene right now a National Congress of the militias and the workers and popular organizations of the entire Libya! Following the example of the dock workers, the working class and all the exploited must stand up a list of demands to take in their own hands the solution of all their demands. Not a single day can pass without the Libyan militias go back with the working class and the poor people. There is from which they came and in this way they will be able to avoid the NTC disarming, corrupting and disintegrating them, seeking to defeat the revolution that has started!
Long live the armed dual power of the Libyan masses! Long live the revolutionary working class and the exploited ones! Long live the socialist revolution of the entire North of Africa and Middle East!
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The port workers of Trípoli, with their fight and demands, show to be a hundred time bolder than all the world reformist left currents
Today we see the left currents from the West to be sorry for the “concience backwardness” of the revolutionary masse of North of Africa and Middle East. The cynism of these “socialist” currents have no limits.
What type of consciousness does they pretend the exploited ones have? If in “the socialist” companies of Libya de Khadafy, like the “Port Socialist Company”, the workers worked twelve hours per day, they do not have bonus, holidays nor security materials, but they count on a refrigerator for 2000 workers and only outdoors changing rooms.
Why the heroic Libyan workers and from the entire region are going to have “socialist” conscious? If Khadafy - the greater agent of imperialism in the region- speaking about “socialism”, he only overexploit, kill and subjugate the working class and the masses to give all the wealth from Libya to the imperialist oil companies. If today on behalf of socialism, the Castro brothers are restoring Capitalism in Cuba, dismissing a million workers and restoring the inheritance right in the island. If Ju Hintao and all the mandarins of the Chinese PC, the spokesmen of the “market socialism”, guarantee to the imperialist transnational millions of Chinese enslaved workers who produce in the worse conditions of maquila, while together with Putin, they fully arm, on behalf of imperialism, the so called “anti-imperialist” and “Socialist” of Al-Assad, so that he does the imperialist “dirty work” smashing the revolutionary masses of Syria.
The demands and the fight of the dock workers of Tripoli demonstrate that the conscious of these workers is million times more accurate and superior than the reformist demands of these leaderships, that in Europe, facing the ferocious attack by the governments and imperialistic regimes against the working class and the masses, called to put pressure for “moderate the attacks” as they did in Greece, and also in Spain, where now they launched “campaigns of awareness” against the labor flexibility that tries to impose Rajoy government and Spanish crown.
The working class and the exploited ones of Libya must defeat to the NTC and their Khadafy generals, and the tribe chiefs and impose their power to solve the crisis of Libya, expropriating without payment and under workrer control all the oil companies, ports, banks, factories and other properties of the imperialist transnational and their native junior partners the native bourgeoisie. This one will be the best help to the revolutionary masses of Syria that today are brutally massacreed by the jackal Al-Assad, on behave of imperialism.
This is the real way out for the workers and exploited ones of Libya: a Republic of the Worker and its militias Counsil. Otherwise, the other alternative will be a bourgeois republic under the command of the NTC or the millionaire regional chiefs, with the oppressed nation tied with doubles and triples chains to the imperialism.
Against all these “socialist” fast chatters, the single and true socialism will be able to set up with the internacionalist Trotskyist, fighting to demonstrate every day to the working class who are their allies and who are their enemies, and defeating all these leadership of the reformist left in order to untie the hands the world working class and that it can conquer the triumph taking power.
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The “Socialist Port Company”
In one of the most important ports of the country located in Tripoli, capital of the recently insurrected Libya, you can find the Socialist Port Company, which has been known worldwide by the protests workers made three months ago.
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You have to pass through a table of entry located at the main entrance to the port, whose bureaucracy demands you to go through more than 5 offices, in 3 different buildings, to obtain an entry permit; there you find officials in each of them denying or minimizing the actions of protest by the workers, and at the same time you can get around a very simple guard, lost at the bottom of the harbor between old trailers and rusty scrap, workers of that undertaking are fulfilling their exhausting working hours.
Three months after having made an exemplary strike, which was echoed around the world, the 300 workers that paralyzed the port of Tripoli are today in a desperate situation. After their claims and petitions, including demands over unemployment, they have not received answers to their requests.
The workers operate within the port 11 hours a day (from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.). But when there are many loads entering the port they must stay there until the end of the work, which often takes weeks.
We shall then proceed to play the requests raised by these workers in the days of strike, adding details expressed orally by the same workers. It should be noted that the majority of these demands are conquests of the working class that they had been deprived of.
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“Praise be to God, prayer and peace on the Prophet of Allah (Mohammad)
From the spontaneous port workers Assembly, meeting on 19 November 2011, we ask the general manager of the port the following basic rights to make this a better place to work:
1. Salary increase (because their salary round the $400 per month, which only meets the minimum needs of a single person or less, due to the great inflation) and that lower interest rates should be charged on loans that workers had to draw (granted by the same company) to feed their families. We demand the already charged interest to be calculated again according to that lesser rate and the difference returned to them, followed by an increase in the funds available for lending.
2.That the port administration building be given back and running at the service of this activity, because it has been held for other purposes. The demand in question comes from the lack of infrastructure and offices for an optimal management of the port.
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3. That the company provides workers a decent meal and a spacious accommodation as a dining room with good service and a staff assigned to the task. This would generate more jobs and improvements in working conditions, because today, during their workdays of 11 hours, the port workers do not receive any meals. At the same time we require clarifying the fact that the dining room has been previously closed by an external consultant, who made an accounting balance and without giving out the results in ciphers stated that the service in the dining room should be suspended.
4. The luxurious building previously belonging to Saif al - Islam (the son of the executed dictator), which operates a yacht club, should be transformed in a clinic that provides quality medical care to all workers of the port (not only to those in the Socialist Port Company).
5. Payment of a percentage bonus due to the unfavorable area and risky task, since they are exposed to the corrosion of sea salt and a hostile climate. |
6. The payment of prizes in percentage according to the cargo downloaded and that it is paid of in time and due form. Fairly enough, when the load is a great deal, workers should receive a prize. But it happens that the same is very low, almost negligible, and they are paid it three months later, when they should receive it at most three days later.
7. After the fall of Gaddafi a Commission came to investigate the expenses carried out from February 17, 2011 (since Benghazi and Tripoli staged their uprising) until August 30, 2011. Very mysteriously, those documents with the signatures of the authorities disappeared without any explanation. This is why we are requiring the appearance of these documents, as well as the regular and honest operation of a Commission of control of the expenses of the port, able to present its reports without any sort of interference.
8. Many offices in poor condition were demolished to be rebuilt, but up to today their place shows only rubble. Port workers call for the quick reconstruction of these offices, with appropriate physical conditions.
9. An improvement in their bedrooms. Their homes in the port are in very precarious conditions. The workers have taken refuge in abandoned trailers. The cabinets to store their belongings are outside of those trailers, exposed to the rain and corrosion. It is worth clarifying that in the days of intense rain, trailers show to be as permeable as colanders, leaving water to get in.
10. Architectural improvements that incorporate baths and, above all, a network of clean water, as they do not have even with the vital element to make "wudu" (ritual Muslim ceremony consisting of washing themselves, a prerequisite to be able to pray).
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11. Payment of a 13th month per year, since they had it but was wrested from them. This bonus should be fair regarding to the amount; it must never be less than a monthly salary.
12- Registering of unregistered workers in the permanent payroll; those workers are only used by the company, in exchange for coins, when there are many loads and they need extra arms. These workers are usually at the port waiting for well loaded vessels to come to get working. So if the vessels entering the port fail to have cargo, they do not work and are not paid.
13. Clothes for laboring and security features. The port workers do not have the same and suffer damage to their health. They are not equipped with a system of prevention of fires, or elements to counter a casualty of these features. In fact the present fire truck does not work. To this day, if the workers want to have some of these elements, they must buy them from their meager pay.
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14.That people for the managerial posts are appointed based on their skills. That the right person is named in the proper place, able to solve the problems of each Department. Enough with the selection of these applicants by "finger", only because they have friends or contacts with people in power. That is why the workers call for the resignation of the Treasurer and other officials who served the Gaddafist regime. If the President of the company sacked from their posts people from a Department staff alleging that they worked under Gaddafi, then make it fair and do the same with all those who are in the same situation.
15. Reverse the allocation of utility cars, which were delivered to administrative officers who, contrary to what it should be, use them for personal purposes and not as a means of work at the port. It is worth remarking that the distances within the same are extensive. Therefore having facilities for mobility is a necessary condition for a good performance.
16. Immediate payment of overtime, when workers must be working after hour due to the large amount of cargo. |
17. Cessation of free granting of fuel for the cars for personal use, used by officials of the administration.
18. Put a limit to the free distribution of phone cards for cell phones, except for those who really need it, because 330 cards were delivered, 10 Libyan dinars each, which fell into the hands of people that already had phone line in their offices, with the possibility to make international calls.
"This request closes in the following way:
“A meeting between Hasan Al - Ttanashy (the President of the Board), Mohammad Ahmeidan (Manager of Warehouses), Ali Abrik (Manager of the Legal Department), Suleyman Ben Iasa'ad (Manager General of the port of Tripoli) was held on November 27, 2011, with a group of workers. Everybody agreed on the legitimacy of these claims.
But then there was no response to what had been required, which is nothing but point to improve the port and the company itself.
We do not see this as a problem that should be elevated to the Department of Transportation or the national authorities, but it is a problem that must be resolved internally.
"Libya free forever!
Assembly of workers in Tripoli Harbor"
Over Libya many other workers suffer the same conditions as for low wages, unhealthy working conditions, etc. As for port workers, they are open to receive help from other sectors who want to fight alongside them for these demands. They know that the laws governing the North African country prohibit joint actions between workers and militia. But they still understand that this unity is the solution. |
