Solidarity Message from Doro-Chiba to Fighting Metal Workers and Workers of UİD-DER

Dear friends of UID-DER,

Please find attached Doro-Chiba's solidarity message to your courageous struggle.
We wholeheartedly support the decisive strike of United Metal Workers' Union (UMWU) and indignantly condemn the strike ban by the AKP government in the name of “disruption of national security”.

It'd be great if you could forward this message to UMWU, too.

Fight together shoulder to shoulder in international workers’ solidarity!

Workers united, will never be defeated!

In Solidarity

International Labor Solidarity Committee of Doro-Chiba

General Secretary

H. Yamamoto

http://www.doro-chiba.org/english/english2.htm

Brothers and sisters of United Metal Workers’ Union and UID-DER (Association of International Workers Solidarity),

From Japan far across the ocean, we send a heartfelt message of workers’ solidarity to you, 15,000 metal workers of 22 factories, rising up for a determined strike against MESS pressure. We indignantly condemn together with you the strike ban by the AKP government which outrageously denounces the strike as being “disruptive in terms of national security”.

You are fighting against a long-term labor contract for three years, outsourcing, long working hours and demanding wage to live a decent life, wage responding to heavy work, working conditions to guarantee education and future for children and a right to strike. Your righteous struggle is enormously encouraging all the metal workers and all Turkish workers.

Not only Turkish workers but also Japanese workers are tremendously moved and inspired by your courageous strike.

Let me tell you what is happening right now in Japanese working class people under the rule of the imperialist Abe administration. In face of sharp drop of Japanese population because of continuing birth rate decline, a campaign for “regional revitalization” is going on with a warning that 896 out of 1800 local municipalities would perish by 2040. The aim of the Abe government is to carry out neo-liberal policy in a more drastic way “to create sustainable communities by stimulating local economy” preventing outflow of young people to big cities (“Regional revitalization” by Cabinet Office).

On the other hand, one out of six people (one out of three for single women) is forced to live a life below the poverty line (a half amount of average after-tax income), a life without stable living place or possibility of marriage. This horrible reality has been brought about by rigorous enforcement of neo-liberal policy launched by the Division and Privatization of the National Railway in 1987. In the midst of the aggravating global economic crisis, Japanese imperialism in death agony (after its “lost twenty years” 1990~2010) is desperately driving a policy for its survival, a policy which threatens the very existence of workers, the target of their exploitation and indispensable base for the reproduction of capital!

The Abe administration is rushing for the restart, new construction and export of nuclear power plants with an aim of stockpiling Plutonium for Japanese nuclear armament, while letting a large amount of radioactive materials pour into the atmosphere, ocean and earth of the world from the wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, which exposes its total inability to control the dangerous situation.

On the other hand, during his recent visit to Israel and other countries in the Middle East, Abe openly declared the will of Japanese imperialism to intervene in the aggressive war in this area. The cabinet decision on last July 1 to admit the exercise of the right of collective defense is going to be practiced by this move.

Your strike is clearly demonstrating that the whole wealth of a society is created by workers and it is high time working class put all its power to establish a society, in which workers have complete control of all activities.

Doro-Mito (National Railway Motive Power Union of Mito), a brother union of Doro-Chiba, stands now at the forefront of the struggle to abolish all nuclear plants. They are fighting to prevent the restart of railway and bus transport in a hazardous region adjoining the Fukushima Dai-ichi, refusing to work exposed to radioactive contamination. Their struggle is enthusiastically supported by the inhabitants there.

Doro-Chiba is rising up for the March Spring Labor Offensive against privatization, outsourcing and casualization of jobs. Together with local government and public service workers and education workers, we are firmly determined to establish fighting local communities, opposing Abe’s offensive of scrapping local communities and of wholesale privatization of society.

Fight together shoulder to shoulder in international workers’ solidarity!

No salvation! On our own!

Either all of us or none of us!

In Solidarity,

President of National Railway Motive Power Union of Chiba (Doro-Chiba)

TANAKA Yasuhiro (Y. Tanaka)

11 February, 2015

http://www.doro-chiba.org/english/english.htm